| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a
harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections,
our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an
eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must
remain young, no doubt, to understand youth.
Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the
essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at
the very outset, that in theory and practice there was no such
piece of driveling nonsense in this world as a certificate of
birth; that plenty of women were younger at forty than many a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: choose but stay. I looked fixedly at her, striving to read the story
of her life from the things among which she was crouching. Had she
indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once
she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of
simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal.
"Ah! ah!" I cried, "now I know thee! Miserable woman, why hast thou
prostituted thyself? In the age of thy passions, in the time of thy
prosperity, the grace and purity of thy youth were forgotten.
Forgetful of thy heroic devotion, thy pure life, thy abundant faith,
thou didst resign thy primitive power and thy spiritual supremacy for
fleshly power. Thy linen vestments, thy couch of moss, the cell in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: years of age, or even more. -- A. Q.}
Endnote 2
One of the fleetest of the African antelopes. -- A. Q.
Endnote 3
Alluding to the Zulu custom of opening the stomach of a dead
foe. They have a superstition that, if this is not done, as
the body of their enemy swells up so will the bodies of those
who killed him swell up. -- A. Q.
Endnote 4
No doubt this owl was a wingless bird. I afterwards learnt that
the hooting of an owl is a favourite signal among the Masai tribes.
Allan Quatermain |
