| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: couldn't bear to keep the secret from you. You will be in the Rue
d'Artois, only a step or two from the Rue Saint-Lazare, and you
are to be housed like a prince! Any one might have thought we
were furnishing the house for a bride. Oh! we have done a lot of
things in the last month, and you knew nothing about it. My
attorney has appeared on the scene, and my daughter is to have
thirty-six thousand francs a year, the interest on her money, and
I shall insist on having her eight hundred thousand invested in
sound securities, landed property that won't run away."
Eugene was dumb. He folded his arms and paced up and down in his
cheerless, untidy room. Father Goriot waited till the student's
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: life. A few mornings after, she sent me to a matinee, which was
given by some of the Opera people, who were in Newport
strengthening the larynx with applications of brine. When the
concert was half over, and the audience were making the usual hum
and stir, I saw Mr. Uxbridge against a pillar, with his hands
incased in pearl-colored gloves, and holding a shiny hat. He turned
half away when he caught my eye, and then darted toward me.
"You have not been much more interested in the music than you are
in the lawsuit," he said, seating himself beside me.
"The *tutoyer* of the Italian voice is agreeable, however."
"It makes one dreamy."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: pocket; he may accept confidences; explain his in-
nocence as if it were a sin; he may take advantage
of misconceptions, of desires and of weaknesses; he
ought to conceal his horror and other emotions,
and, if the fate of a human being, and that human
being a magnificent young girl, is strangely in-
volved--why, he should contemplate that fate
(whatever it might seem to be) without turning a
hair. And all these things I have done; the ex-
plaining, the listening, the pretending--even to
the discretion--and nobody, not even Hermann's
Falk |
