| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: that there are not two in the Louvre, and that the extravagance of
Louis XIV. shrunk from such expense at Versailles. On all sides
marble, wood, and silk had served as materials for exquisite
workmanship.
Emilio pushed open a carved oak door, made his way down the long,
vaulted passage which runs from end to end on each floor of a Venetian
palazzo, and stopped before another door, so familiar that it made his
heart beat. On seeing him, a lady companion came out of a vast
drawing-room, and admitted him to a study where he found the Duchess
on her knees in front of a Madonna.
He had come to confess and ask forgiveness. Massimilla, in prayer, had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: bellandi cupidi magno dolore adficiebantur. Pro multitudine autem hominum
et pro gloria belli atque fortitudinis angustos se fines habere
arbitrabantur, qui in longitudinem milia passuum CCXL, in latitudinem
CLXXX patebant.
His rebus adducti et auctoritate Orgetorigis permoti constituerunt ea
quae ad proficiscendum pertinerent comparare, iumentorum et carrorum quam
maximum numerum coemere, sementes quam maximas facere, ut in itinere copia
frumenti suppeteret, cum proximis civitatibus pacem et amicitiam
confirmare. Ad eas res conficiendas biennium sibi satis esse duxerunt; in
tertium annum profectionem lege confirmant. Ad eas res conficiendas
Orgetorix deligitur. Is sibi legationem ad civitates suscipit. In eo
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: to some battered box that was shoved under the bed, to the drawer of some
lame dressing table, where they would be in the range of vision by the dim
night lamp. Nonetheless I scrutinized every article of furniture,
every conceivable cover for a hoard, and noticed that there were half
a dozen things with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary,
with brass ornaments of the style of the Empire--a receptacle
somewhat rickety but still capable of keeping a great many secrets.
I don't know why this article fascinated me so, inasmuch as I certainly
had no definite purpose of breaking into it; but I stared at it so hard
that Miss Tita noticed me and changed color. Her doing this made me think
I was right and that wherever they might have been before the Aspern papers
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