| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: the world, which he made his cloister, Wilfrid had found no balm for
his wounds; he saw nothing in nature to which he could attach himself.
In him, despair had dried the sources of desire. He was one of those
beings who, having gone through all passions and come out victorious,
have nothing more to raise in their hot-beds, and who, lacking
opportunity to put themselves at the head of their fellow-men to
trample under iron heel entire populations, buy, at the price of a
horrible martyrdom, the faculty of ruining themselves in some belief,
--rocks sublime, which await the touch of a wand that comes not to
bring the waters gushing from their far-off spring.
Led by a scheme of his restless, inquiring life to the shores of
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Ay," continued Utterson, "and the fractures, too, are rusty."
The two men looked at each other with a scare. "This is beyond
me, Poole," said the lawyer. "Let us go back to the cabinet."
They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an
occasional awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more
thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table,
there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some
white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an
experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.
"That is the same drug that I was always bringing him," said
Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full
front. The condemned man was substituted for the dying woman--same
pallor, same glance, same appeal to God. Instead of the Dutch doctor,
he had painted the cold, official figure of the sheriff's clerk
attired in black; but he had added an old woman to the young one of
Gerard Douw. The cruelly simple and good-humored face of the
executioner completed and dominated the group. This plagiarism, very
cleverly disguised, was not discovered. The catalogue contained the
following:--
510. Grassou de Fougeres (Pierre), rue de Navarin, 2.
Death-toilet of a Chouan, condemned to execution in 1809.
|
