| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: superior to me.--Listen: the garret you are interested in is inhabited
by a woman of about thirty, and in her love is carried to fanaticism.
The object of her adoration is a young man of pleasing appearance but
endowed by some malignant fairy with every conceivable vice. This
fellow is a gambler, and it is hard to say which he is most addicted
to--wine or women; he has, to my knowledge, committed acts deserving
punishment by law. Well, and to him this unhappy woman sacrificed a
life of ease, a man who worshiped her, and the father of her children.
--But what is wrong, Monsieur le Comte?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"She has allowed him to squander a perfect fortune; she would, I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: could hardly restrain a smile as he heard himself styled a
"chevalier," amused to observe how the eagerness of a lover did not
shrink from absurdity.
"The order of Saint-Michel which in former days men committed follies
to obtain," he said, "has now, Monsieur le vicomte, gone the way of
other privileges! It is given only to doctors and poor artists. The
kings have done well to join it to that of Saint-Lazare who was, I
believe, a poor devil recalled to life by a miracle. From this point
of view the order of Saint-Michel and Saint-Lazare may be, for many of
us, symbolic."
After this reply, at once sarcastic and dignified, silence reigned,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: devolved, the Cane Memmi, sank into poverty during the fatal period
between 1796 and 1814. In the twentieth year of the present century
they were represented only by a young man whose name was Emilio, and
an old palace which is regarded as one of the chief ornaments of the
Grand Canal. This son of Venice the Fair had for his whole fortune
this useless Palazzo, and fifteen hundred francs a year derived from a
country house on the Brenta, the last plot of the lands his family had
formerly owned on /terra firma/, and sold to the Austrian government.
This little income spared our handsome Emilio the ignominy of
accepting, as many nobles did, the indemnity of a franc a day, due to
every impoverished patrician under the stipulations of the cession to
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