| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: BRAGELONNE. And the point is that neither need be wrong. We shall
always shock each other both in life and art; we cannot get the sun
into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be such a
thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there glimmer some
hint of the great light that blinds us from heaven; enough if, in
the other, there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit of
magnanimity. I would scarce send to the VICOMTE a reader who was
in quest of what we may call puritan morality. The ventripotent
mulatto, the great cater, worker, earner and waster, the man of
much and witty laughter, the man of the great heart and alas! of
the doubtful honesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: falsehood on the one side, or by treachery on the other.
Therefore say I that he shall not assay to escape, but rather
right manfully to bear the bonds with which he is bound, and
to do honour to them."'
"How may this be?" said Martimor.
"By clean living," said Lancelot, "and by keeping himself
from wine which heats the blood, and by quests and labours and
combats wherein the fierceness of the heart is spent and
overcome, and by inward joy in the pure worship of his lady,
whereat none may take offence."
"How then shall a man bear himself in the following of a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: her the least pain, I will kill you/." such was the sense of that
brief gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious,
along the dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a
secret door into the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made
him walk cautiously through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a
little gate opening upon a street which was at that hour deserted. De
Marsay took a keen notice of everything. The carriage awaited him.
This time the mulatto did not accompany him, and at the moment when
Henri put his head out of the window to look once more at the gardens
of the hotel, he encountered the white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he
exchanged a glance. On either side there was a provocation, a
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
