| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: public opinion sometimes sends strange travelers; however, We can
always find a place for Our faithful adherents."
This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giving Monsieur de
Fontaine an appointment as administrator in the office of Crown lands.
As a consequence of the intelligent attention with which he listened
to his royal Friend's sarcasms, his name always rose to His Majesty's
lips when a commission was to be appointed of which the members were
to receive a handsome salary. He had the good sense to hold his tongue
about the favor with which he was honored, and knew how to entertain
the monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. delighted as
much as in a well-written note, by his brilliant manner of repeating
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: sufficiently recognized, never appreciated as it deserved; that nothing
came to a prosperous issue; that for her part she was beginning to grow
weary of it; that the king must at last resolve upon other measures. Did
you hear that?
Egmont. Not all; I was thinking at the time of something else. She is a
woman, good Orange, and all women expect that every one shall submit
passively to their gentle yoke; that every Hercules shall lay aside his lion's
skin, assume the distaff, and swell their train; and, because they are
themselves peaceably inclined, imagine forsooth, that the ferment which
seizes a nation, the storm which powerful rivals excite against one
another, may be allayed by one soothing word, and the most discordant
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had
learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now
used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in
values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself)
the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts
at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by
laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imagination to
perceive that, in respect of the wife's social arts, a husband
necessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry.
In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himself
strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife's feelings for
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