| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: an ignorant fear of occult sciences and their results.
Without being precisely one of the famous mathematicians, the man whom
the count had brought enjoyed in Normandy the equivocal reputation
which attached to a physician who was known to do mysterious works. He
belonged to the class of sorcerers who are still called in parts of
France "bonesetters." This name belonged to certain untutored geniuses
who, without apparent study, but by means of hereditary knowledge and
the effect of long practice, the observations of which accumulated in
the family, were bonesetters; that is, they mended broken limbs and
cured both men and beasts of certain maladies, possessing secrets said
to be marvellous for the treatment of serious cases. But not only had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: effort to rejoin their friends, and that done to have hung upon their
heels and overmastered their rear ranks, but he did nothing of the
sort: what he did was, to crash front to front against the Thebans.
And so with shields interlocked they shoved and fought and fought and
shoved, dealing death and yielding life. There was no shouting, nor
yet was there even silence, but a strange and smothered utterance,
such as rage and battle vent.[9] At last a portion of the Thebans
forced their way through towards Helicon, but many were slain in that
departure.
[9] Or, "as the rage and fury of battle may give vent to." See
"Cyrop." VII. i. 38-40. A graphic touch omitted in "Hell." IV.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: her sister's wedding with my presence. If you are to realize what this
wedding was like you must know that I paid my charwoman, poor
creature, four francs a month; for which sum she came every morning to
make my bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and
make ready my breakfast, before going to her day's work of turning the
handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she earned five-pence. Her
husband, a cabinetmaker, made four francs a day at his trade; but as
they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
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