| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: "I understood Monsieur Bonnet at once," continued Farrabesche; "it did
not take him many words to tell me what I had to do. Madame, this fact
I tell you of is all the more singular because there are, toward the
plain, great rents and fissures in the mountain, gorges and ravines
down which the water flows; but, strange to say, these clefts and
ravines and gorges all send their streams into a little valley which
is several feet below the level of your plain. To-day I have
discovered the reason of this phenomenon: from the Roche-Vive to
Montegnac, at the foot of the mountains, runs a shelf or barricade of
rock, varying in height from twenty to thirty feet; there is not a
break in it from end to end; and it is formed of a species of rock
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his
seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously
abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends
at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me
tell of the rooms in which it was held. These were seven--an
imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long
and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to
the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is
scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have
been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: love are fleeting, if you will, that they are rigidly forbidden,
that they lead with certainty to eternal suffering; and, what
would assuredly make a deeper impression upon me than any other
argument, say that the more sweet and delectable they are, the
brighter will be the reward of Heaven for giving them up in
sacrifice; but do in the name of justice admit, that, constituted
as the heart of man is, they form here, on earth, our most
perfect happiness.'
"My last sentence restored to Tiberge his good humour. He
allowed that my ideas were not altogether so unreasonable. The
only point he made, was in asking me why I did not carry my own
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