| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: confiscated and made over to my next-of-kin; but I had carried off my
diamonds, five of Titian's pictures taken down from their frames and
rolled up, and all my gold.
"I went to Milan, no one molested me, my affair in nowise interested
the State.--One small observation before I go further," he continued,
after a pause, "whether it is true or no that the mother's fancies at
the time of conception or in the months before birth can influence her
child, this much is certain, my mother during her pregnancy had a
passion for gold, and I am the victim of a monomania, of a craving for
gold which must be gratified. Gold is so much of a necessity of life
for me, that I have never been without it; I must have gold to toy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: from everything! It is a frightful exile, and all the more cruel
because he is kept within sight of the town where he can hardly ever
come. Since his troubles he walks very feebly, yet he will have to
walk three miles to see his old friends. He has taken to his bed, just
now, with fever. The parsonage at Saint-Symphorien is very cold and
damp, and the parish is too poor to repair it. The poor old man will
be buried in a living tomb. Oh, it is an infamous plot!"
To end this history it will suffice to relate a few events in a simple
way, and to give one last picture of its chief personages.
Five months later the vicar-general was made Bishop of Troyes; and
Madame de Listomere was dead, leaving an annuity of fifteen hundred
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: Also another thought passed through their minds--that if the sentence
were executed at once, a dead man cannot appeal, and that here I had no
friends to take up my cause and avenge me. But of all this they said
nothing. Only at a sign I was marched away to my little house and
imprisoned under guard.
Now I propose to tell the rest of the history of these tragic events as
they happened, although some of them did not come to my knowledge till
the morrow or afterwards, for I think this will be the more simple and
the easier plan.
CHAPTER XXI
THE INNOCENT BLOOD
Marie |
