| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: cups, the pyramids of fruit, the dazzling lights of the banquet,
the flushed scared faces, the hues of the cushions pressed by the
white arms of the women.
"My lord, your father is dying!" he said; and at those solemn
words, uttered in hollow tones, a veil of crape [sic] seemed to
be drawn over the wild mirth.
Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests that might
be rendered by, "Excuse me; this kind of thing does not happen
every day."
Does it so seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in
the full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: poor sub-lieutenant dining at his general's table. He let Clementine
talk, listened deferentially as to a superior, did not differ with her
in anything, and waited to be questioned before he spoke at all. He
seemed actually stupid to the countess, whose coquettish little ways
missed their mark in presence of such frigid gravity and conventional
respect. In vain Adam kept saying: "Do be lively, Thaddeus; one would
really suppose you were not at home. You must have made a wager to
disconcert Clementine." Thaddeus continued heavy and half asleep. When
the servants left the room at the end of the dessert the captain
explained that his habits were diametrically opposite to those of
society,--he went to bed at eight o'clock and got up very early in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: can take the place of a mother's eye. The monotonous life in the
dainty little Chalet, surrounded by the choice flowers which Dumay
cultivated; the family customs, as regular as clock-work, the
provincial decorum, the games at whist while the mother knitted and
the daughter sewed, the silence, broken only by the roar of the sea in
the equinoctial storms,--all this monastic tranquillity did in fact
hide an inner and tumultuous life, the life of ideas, the life of the
spiritual being. We sometimes wonder how it is possible for young
girls to do wrong; but such as do so have no blind mother to send her
plummet line of intuition to the depths of the subterranean fancies of
a virgin heart. The Dumays slept when Modeste opened her window, as it
Modeste Mignon |
