| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money.
I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money!
Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose because
they could get some one else's without working so hard for it.
It isn't worth finding out. It may be that it was not Madame de Cintre
that backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it.
I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?
You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind to that.
If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so much;
and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought
of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: water which counterbalances the loftiest virtues. The prayers put up
by two feeble nuns and a priest represented the whole Monarchy, and
possibly at the same time, the Revolution found expression in the
stranger, for the remorse in his face was so great that it was
impossible not to think that he was fulfilling the vows of a boundless
repentance.
When the priest came to the Latin words, Introibo ad altare Dei, a
sudden divine inspiration flashed upon him; he looked at the three
kneeling figures, the representatives of Christian France, and said
instead, as though to blot out the poverty of the garret, "We are
about to enter the Sanctuary of God!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, by
strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of age. It was
bold; it was counting on her own life; but without this boldness the
good mother would certainly have found it impossible to live and to
bring her child up suitably, and he was her only hope, her future, the
spring of all her joys.
Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, and a man of
mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with extreme sensitiveness.
From his infancy he had in everything shown a most ardent nature. In
him mere desire became a guiding force and the motive power of his
whole being, the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his
Albert Savarus |
