| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: faculty of reading through your foreheads the desires which have
brought you here, should I be what you think I am?" she said,
encircling all three with her controlling glance, to David's great
satisfaction. The old man rubbed his hands with pleasure as he left
the room.
"Ah!" she resumed after a pause, "you have come, all of you, with the
curiosity of children. You, my poor Monsieur Becker, have asked
yourself how it was possible that a girl of seventeen should know even
a single one of those secrets which men of science seek with their
noses to the earth,--instead of raising their eyes to heaven. Were I
to tell you how and at what point the plant merges into the animal you
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: SIMONE [turning round]. Who spake of Death? Let no one speak of
Death.
What should Death do in such a merry house,
With but a wife, a husband, and a friend
To give it greeting? Let Death go to houses
Where there are vile, adulterous things, chaste wives
Who growing weary of their noble lords
Draw back the curtains of their marriage beds,
And in polluted and dishonoured sheets
Feed some unlawful lust. Ay! 'tis so
Strange, and yet so. YOU do not know the world.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: du Temple that is not done by this great painter; none of them costs
less than five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois
families have for employing him is this:--
"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year
with his notary."
As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying
to them:--
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