| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: of the house below, as they deemed it a blessing to have her there.
A priest visited her to confess her every day. "I have ask'd her,"
says my landlady, "how she, as she liv'd, could possibly find so much
employment for a confessor?" "Oh," said she, "it is impossible
to avoid vain thoughts." I was permitted once to visit her, She was
chearful and polite, and convers'd pleasantly. The room was clean,
but had no other furniture than a matras, a table with a crucifix
and book, a stool which she gave me to sit on, and a picture
over the chimney of Saint Veronica displaying her handkerchief,
with the miraculous figure of Christ's bleeding face on it,
which she explained to me with great seriousness. She look'd pale,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of
Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus
harbored was a noble escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they
all suspected the countess of being guilty of one of those
generosities, which the laws of the day called crimes, and punished on
the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in a low voice that it
would be best to say no more, but to do their best to save the poor
woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.
"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take
notice of it, and search her house, and THEN--"
He said no more, but all present understood what he meant.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: that du Tillet himself had lighted the charcoal of the vulgar brazier,
the sight of which had so justly terrified the countess.
"He has but me in all the world," said Marie to her sister, "and I
will not fail him."
That speech contains the secret motive of most women; they can be
heroic when they are certain of being all in all to a grand and
irreproachable being.
CHAPTER VIII
A LOVER SAVED AND LOST
Du Tillet had heard some talk even in financial circles of the more or
less possible adoration of his sister-in-law for Nathan; but he was
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