| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: always wish for their husbands, and even for their lovers.
A Mlle. de la Rodiere, twenty-two years of age, an heiress with a
rent-roll of forty thousand livres, had come to live in the
neighborhood. Gaston always met her at Manerville whenever he was
obliged to go thither. These various personages being to each other as
the terms of a proportion sum, the following letter will throw light
on the appalling problem which Mme. de Beauseant had been trying for
the past month to solve:--
"My beloved angel, it seems like nonsense, does it not, to write
to you when there is nothing to keep us apart, when a caress so
often takes the place of words, and words too are caresses? Ah,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: envelop them in old Grecian dress, and, without playing false for a
moment to his own Christianity, seek in the writings of heathen
sages a wider and a healthier view of humanity than was afforded by
an ascetic creed.
No wonder that the appearance of "Telemaque," published in Holland
without the permission of Fenelon, delighted throughout Europe that
public which is always delighted with new truths, as long as it is
not required to practise them. To read "Telemaque" was the right
and the enjoyment of everyone. To obey it, the duty only of
princes. No wonder that, on the other hand, this "Vengeance de
peuples, lecon des rois," as M. de Lamartine calls it, was taken for
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: this time for a private, if a generous end. And the man whom he had
reproved for stealing corn he was now to set stealing treasure. And
then there was Madame von Rosen, upon whom he looked down with some
of that ill-favoured contempt of the chaste male for the imperfect
woman. Because he thought of her as one degraded below scruples, he
had picked her out to be still more degraded, and to risk her whole
irregular establishment in life by complicity in this dishonourable
act. It was uglier than a seduction.
Otto had to walk very briskly and whistle very busily; and when at
last he heard steps in the narrowest and darkest of the alleys, it
was with a gush of relief that he sprang to meet the Countess. To
|
