| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: in her system a slow consumption which day by day was gathering
greater force. A last blow hastened it. She tried to warn the duke as
to the results of Maximilien's education, and was repulsed; she saw
that she could give no remedy to the shocking seeds which were
germinating in the soul of her second child. From this moment began a
period of decline which soon became so visible as to bring about the
appointment of Beauvouloir to the post of physician to the house of
Herouville and the government of Normandy.
The former bonesetter came to live at the castle. In those days such
posts belonged to learned men, who thus gained a living and the
leisure necessary for a studious life and the accomplishment of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: sultan, their Shahabaham, their terrible public, which, if they don't
amuse it, will cut off their heads by curtailing the ingots and
emptying their pockets.
This madness of our epoch reacted upon the illustrious Gaudissart, and
here follows the history of how it happened. A life-insurance company
having been told of his irresistible eloquence offered him an unheard-
of commission, which he graciously accepted. The bargain concluded and
the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say
weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind
of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business,
taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "for we must go this night to the little isle of sheep, where our
fathers lie in the dead-cairn, and to-morrow to the Earl's Hall,
and there shall you find a wife by my providing."
So the man rose and put forth his boat at the time of the
sunsetting; and the Poor Thing sat in the prow, and the spray blew
through his bones like snow, and the wind whistled in his teeth,
and the boat dipped not with the weight of him.
"I am fearful to see you, my son," said the man. " For methinks
you are no thing of God."
"It is only the wind that whistles in my teeth," said the Poor
Thing, "and there is no life in me to keep it out."
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