| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: the iron bars seemed to exclude every ray of light.
But when Cornelius awoke next morning, a beam of the morning
sun was playing about those iron bars; pigeons were hovering
about with outspread wings, whilst others were lovingly
cooing on the roof or near the still closed window.
Cornelius ran to that window and opened it; it seemed to him
as if new life, and joy, and liberty itself were entering
with this sunbeam into his cell, which, so dreary of late,
was now cheered and irradiated by the light of love.
When Gryphus, therefore, came to see his prisoner in the
morning, he no longer found him morose and lying in bed, but
The Black Tulip |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: evening you detect her gazing fixedly at a middle-aged man wearing a
decoration, who bows and goes out. She has ordered her carriage, and
goes.
"You are not the rose, but you have been with the rose, and you go to
bed under the golden canopy of a delicious dream, which will last
perhaps after Sleep, with his heavy finger, has opened the ivory gates
of the temple of dreams.
"The lady, when she is at home, sees no one before four; she is shrewd
enough always to keep you waiting. In her house you will find
everything in good taste; her luxury is for hourly use, and duly
renewed; you will see nothing under glass shades, no rags of wrappings
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: problem for this deep thinker; he must invent a method of making cheap
paper, and that quickly; he must make the discovery, in fact, in order
to apply the proceeds to the needs of the household and of the
business. What words can describe the brain that can forget the cruel
preoccupations caused by hidden want, by the daily needs of a family
and the daily drudgery of a printer's business, which requires such
minute, painstaking care; and soar, with the enthusiasm and
intoxication of the man of science, into the regions of the unknown in
quest of a secret which daily eludes the most subtle experiment? And
the inventor, alas! as will shortly be seen, has plenty of woes to
endure, besides the ingratitude of the many; idle folk that can do
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