| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: of youth, and Sechard senior is a case in point--the older he grew,
the better he loved to drink. The master-passion had given a stamp of
originality to an ursine physiognomy; his nose had developed till it
reached the proportions of a double great-canon A; his veined cheeks
looked like vine-leaves, covered, as they were, with bloated patches
of purple, madder red, and often mottled hues; till altogether, the
countenance suggested a huge truffle clasped about by autumn vine
tendrils. The little gray eyes, peering out from beneath thick
eyebrows like bushes covered with snow, were agleam with the cunning
of avarice that had extinguished everything else in the man, down to
the very instinct of fatherhood. Those eyes never lost their cunning
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: or two into an open space which lay before what seemed to be a grotto,
a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and
protected from its fury by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced
an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a sudden
noise awaking us in the dead of night.
We saw, sitting on a vast granite boulder, a man who looked at us. His
glance, like that of the flash of a cannon, came from two bloodshot
eyes, and his stoical immobility could be compared only to the
immutable granite masses that surrounded him. His eyes moved slowly,
his body remaining rigid as though he were petrified. Then, having
cast upon us that look which struck us like a blow, he turned his eyes
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: For instance, persons curious in such matters may remark the figurine
of a woman carved on the capital of one of the portal columns, with
her robe caught up to show to a stout monk crouching in the capital of
the corresponding column "that which Brunelle showed to Marphise";
while above this portal stood, at the time of which we write, the
statue of Louis XII. Several of the window-casings of this facade,
carved in the same style, and now, unfortunately, destroyed, amused,
or seemed to amuse Christophe, on whom the arquebusiers of the guard
were raining jests.
"He would like to live there," said the sub-corporal, playing with the
cartridges of his weapon, which were prepared for use in the shape of
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