| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: keys, suitable for the tall massive heavily-paneled and
iron-ornamented doors. The entire villa was built in this heavy
old German style, the favourite fashion of the last few years.
When they had looked the locks over carefully, Muller lit the lamp
that hung over the desk in the study and closed the window shutters
tight. Bauer had smiled at first as he watched his, protege's
actions, but his smile changed to a look of keen interest as he
suddenly understood. Muller took his place in the chair before the
desk and looked over at the door of the vestibule, which was
directly opposite him. "Yes, that's all right," he said with a
deep breath.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they
crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of
the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of
images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis
XII.'s two stairways.
However dazzled we may be by these recurring forms of indefatigable
labor, we cannot fail to see that money was lacking to Francois I. for
Blois, as it was to Louis XIV. for Versailles. More than one figurine
lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more
than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on
the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: publish his writings, once remarked that "more ideas are stolen than
pocket-handkerchiefs." Perhaps in course of time we may have an
Exchange for thought; in fact, even now ideas, good or bad, have their
consols, are bought up, imported, exported, sold, and quoted like
stocks. If ideas are not on hand ready for sale, speculators try to
pass off words in their stead, and actually live upon them as a bird
lives on the seeds of his millet. Pray do not laugh; a word is worth
quite as much as an idea in a land where the ticket on a sack is of
more importance than the contents. Have we not seen libraries working
off the word "picturesque" when literature would have cut the throat
of the word "fantastic"? Fiscal genius has guessed the proper tax on
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