| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: nothing; but he has a wife, mind you!--and if you ever find yourself
face to face with that wife, you will shake in your shoes as if you
were on the first step of the scaffold, your hair will stand on end.
The Presidente is so vindictive that she would spend ten years over
setting a trap to kill you. She sets that husband of hers spinning
like a top. Through her a charming young fellow committed suicide at
the Conciergerie. A count was accused of forgery--she made his
character as white as snow. She all but drove a person of the highest
quality from the Court of Charles X. Finally, she displaced the
Attorney-General, M. de Granville--"
"That lived in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, at the corner of the Rue
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: inquire by what knowledge Themistocles[83] was able to set Hellas
free. You should ask yourself, what keen wit belonged to Pericles[83]
that he was held to be the best adviser of his fatherland. You should
scan[84] the field of history to learn by what sage wisdom Solon[85]
established for our city her consummate laws. I would have you find
the clue to that peculiar training by which the men of Lacedaemon have
come to be regarded as the best of leaders.[86] Is it not at your
house that their noblest citizens are lodged as representatives of a
foreign state?[87]
[83] See "Mem." II. vi. 13; III. vi. 2; IV. ii. 2.
[84] For the diction, {skepteon, skepteon, aphreteon, ereuneteon,
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: sort of instinct that might eventually take the place of intelligence.
He trained him, in the first place, to mechanical habits of life; and
instilled into him fixed ideas as to the investment of his revenues:
and he spared him the chief difficulties of the management of a
fortune, by leaving his estates all in good order, and leased for long
periods. Nevertheless, a fact which was destined to be of paramount
importance in the life of the poor creature escaped the notice of the
wily old doctor. Timidity is a good deal like dissimulation, and is
equally secretive. Jean-Jacques was passionately in love with the
Rabouilleuse. Nothing, of course, could be more natural. Flore was the
only woman who lived in the bachelor's presence, the only one he could
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