| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: will keep pure and sacred. Farewell; do my bidding with the
thought that your success will bring a gleam of pleasure into my
solitude, and only think of me as we think of absent friends."
Gaston de Nueil read the letter, and wrote the following lines:--
"MADAME,--If I could cease to love you, to take the chances of
becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to me, you must admit
that I should thoroughly deserve my fate. No, I shall not do as
you bid me; the oath of fidelity which I swear to you shall only
be absolved by death. Ah! take my life, unless indeed you do not
fear to carry a remorse all through your own----"
When the man returned from his errand, M. de Nueil asked him with whom
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: of which the deceased canon had been wont to boast.
Incalculable they were! According to the Abbe Chapeloud none of the
priests who inhabited the city of Tours, not even the archbishop, had
ever been the object of such minute and delicate attentions as those
bestowed by Mademoiselle Gamard on her two lodgers. The first words
the canon said to his friend when they met for their walk on the Mail
referred usually to the succulent dinner he had just eaten; and it was
a very rare thing if during the walks of each week he did not say at
least fourteen times, "That excellent spinster certainly has a
vocation for serving ecclesiastics."
"Just think," the canon would say to Birotteau, "that for twelve
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: indescribable curiosity.
She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice
Nature had made so seductive a man.
"These women are making sport of me," said Henri to himself.
At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.
"My Paquita! Be mine!"
"Wouldst thou kill me?" she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious,
but drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.
"Kill thee--I!" he said, smiling.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
