| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by some Marquise or other,
trousers of white woolen stuff, and a dazzling shirt? There he stood,
with a gorgeous cap on his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels
at his waist--"
" 'Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows what the pretty little
morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings, where
Maxime breakfasts," said Nathan. "You tread on a Smyrna carpet, you
admire the sideboards filled with curiosities and rarities fit to make
a King of Saxony envious--"
"Now for the scene itself," said Desroches, and the deepest silence
followed.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
IV
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: married couple and their baby--even examples such as these pale
before the levity of the "little demon," as the French detectives
christened Gabrielle.
Such was Gabrielle Bompard when, on July 26, exactly one year to
a day before the murder of Gouffe, she met in Paris Michel
Eyraud. These two were made for each other. If Gabrielle were
unmoral, Eyraud was immoral. Forty-six at the time of
Gouffe's murder, he was sufficiently practised in vice to
appreciate and enjoy the flagrantly vicious propensities of the
young Gabrielle. All his life Eyraud had spent his substance in
debauchery. His passions were violent and at times
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
