| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: without wanting a republic, he proclaims himself a Catholic, and sits
astride the hobby of that party, namely,--liberty of education. But
this man, who wants free education for every one, is afraid of the
Jesuits; and he is still, as in 1829, uneasy about the encroachments
of the clergy and the Congregation. Can any of you guess the great
party which he proposes to create in the Chamber, and of which he
intends to be the leader? That of the righteous man, the impartial
man, the honest man! as if any such thing could live and breathe in
the parliamentary cook-shops; and as if, moreover, all opinions, to
hide their ugly nothingness, had not, from time immemorial, wrapped
themselves in that banner."
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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: in heaven."
"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed
by a dry stone wall, which was covered with droppings of cow's dung
applied symmetrically. "I asked a peasant-woman who was busy sticking
them on, why it was done; she answered that she was making fuel. Could
you have imagined that when those patches of dung have dried, human
beings would collect them, store them, and use them for fuel? During
the winter, they are even sold as peat is sold. And what do you
suppose the best dressmaker in the place can earn?--five sous a day!"
adding, after a pause, "and her food."
"But see," I said, "how the winds from the sea bend or destroy
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: author of numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members,
after having created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to
have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of his piety.
Dupuytren and Recamier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre
of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other with their fists
on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one
eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigoted
reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodons
flatter Moses.
M. Francois de Neufchateau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory
Les Miserables |
