| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: two years.--This information has been kept in stock to use just when I
should be on the verge of success here----"
"But what have you done to Madame d'Espard?"
"I was so rash, at Madame de Serizy's, as to tell the story, with some
added pleasantries, in the presence of MM. de Bauvan and de Granville,
of her attempt to get a commission of lunacy appointed to sit on her
husband, the Marquis d'Espard. Bianchon had told it to me. Monsieur de
Granville's opinion, supported by those of Bauvan and Serizy,
influenced the decision of the Keeper of the Seals. They all were
afraid of the Gazette des Tribunaux, and dreaded the scandal, and the
Marquise got her knuckles rapped in the summing up for the judgment
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: despair of other servants. She was most economical, and when she ate
she would gather up crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing
should be wasted of the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was
baked especially for her and lasted three weeks.
Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with
a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings,
and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;
erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: "What do you counsel, Armand?"
"There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse. We are strangers to
each other."
"Then take me to the ball," she said, still curious to put
Armand's power to the test. "Thrust a soul that suffered in the
world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happiness for
her now, down into hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you
as your bourgeoises love; I love you so that I could come to you
and fling my arms about your neck before all the world if you
asked it off me. The hateful world has not corrupted me. I am
young at least, and I have grown younger still. I am a child,
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