| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: gentleman waited there to speak with him. I hardly thought he
would come, as the night was advancing. He, however, soon made
his appearance, followed by a servant: I begged of him to choose
a walk where we could be alone. We walked at least a hundred
paces without speaking. He doubtless imagined that so much
precaution could not be taken without some important object. He
waited for my opening speech, and I was meditating how to
commence it.
At length I began.
"`Sir,' said I, trembling, `you are a good and affectionate
parent; you have loaded me with favours, and have forgiven me an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: but fettered by a dull rebellion, of which Esther herself did not know
the cause. Like the Scottish sheep, she wanted to pasture in solitude,
she could not conquer the instincts begotten of debauchery.
Was it that the foul ways of the Paris she had abjured were calling
her back to them? Did the chains of the hideous habits she had
renounced cling to her by forgotten rivets, and was she feeling them,
as old soldiers suffer still, the surgeons tell us, in the limbs they
have lost? Had vice and excess so soaked into her marrow that holy
waters had not yet exorcised the devil lurking there? Was the sight of
him for whom her angelic efforts were made, necessary to the poor
soul, whom God would surely forgive for mingling human and sacred
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: subtile admiration had that unknown being listened to him! The
stillness of the atmosphere enabled him to hear every sound, and he
quivered at the distant rustle of the folds of a gown. He was amazed,
--he, whom all emotions produced by terror sent to the verge of death
--to feel within him the healing, balsamic sensation which his
mother's coming had formerly brought to him.
"Come, Gabrielle, my child," said the voice of Beauvouloir, "I forbade
you to stay upon the seashore after sundown; you must come in, my
daughter."
"Gabrielle," said Etienne to himself. "Oh! the pretty name!"
Beauvouloir presently came to him, rousing his young master from one
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