| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "And yet he went there; he is there!--That woman is bent on breaking
all our hearts! Only yesterday my brother and Celestine pledged their
all to pay off seventy thousand francs on notes of hand signed for
that good-for-nothing creature.--Yes, mamma, my father would have been
arrested and put into prison. Cannot that dreadful woman be content
with having my father, and with all your tears? Why take my Wenceslas?
--I will go to see her and stab her!"
Madame Hulot, struck to the heart by the dreadful secrets Hortense was
unwittingly letting out, controlled her grief by one of the heroic
efforts which a magnanimous mother can make, and drew her daughter's
head on to her bosom to cover it with kisses.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Achilles shook himself, and round him roll'd
His waken'd eyeballs wond'ring where he was,
Whenas his mother had from Chiron fled
To Scyros, with him sleeping in her arms;
E'en thus I shook me, soon as from my face
The slumber parted, turning deadly pale,
Like one ice-struck with dread. Solo at my side
My comfort stood: and the bright sun was now
More than two hours aloft: and to the sea
My looks were turn'd. "Fear not," my master cried,
"Assur'd we are at happy point. Thy strength
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: torment, or to give her strength to bear it, as she whom she loved
had borne it before her. For her mother, who was of a good family
in Yorkshire, had been one of Queen Catherine's bedchamber women,
and the bosom friend and disciple of Anne Askew. And she had sat
in Smithfield, with blood curdled by horror, to see the hapless
Court beauty, a month before the paragon of Henry's Court, carried
in a chair (so crippled was she by the rack) to her fiery doom at
the stake, beside her fellow-courtier, Mr. Lascelles, while the
very heavens seemed to the shuddering mob around to speak their
wrath and grief in solemn thunder peals, and heavy drops which
hissed upon the crackling pile.
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