| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: the place where justice should have searched; don't you think so?"
"I went to see the criminal to try the effect of my suspicions upon
him," replied the young man. "I could not speak them out, for fear of
compromising the woman for whose sake he dies."
"Yes," said the bishop, "we will hold our tongues; we are not the
servants of human justice. One head is enough. Besides, sooner or
later, the secret will be given to the Church."
The perspicacity which the habit of meditation gives to priests is far
superior to that of lawyers or the police. By dint of contemplating
from those terraces the scene of the crime, the prelate and his
secretary had ended by perceiving circumstances unseen by others, in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the
land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was
all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon, and as
she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought
of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung
to her when she was a baby.
Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the
summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and
disturbed the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a
desire to go down into the wood.
"I guess you got to go round by the road, then," said Mrs.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: to perpetuate it!"
He rose to his feet and began to walk about the room with steps in
turn precipitate and slow. Then he made an imperious gesture, sending
every one away from him except the priest.
The next morning the duke, leaning on the arm of his old retainer
Bertrand, walked along the shore and among the rocks looking for the
son he had so long hated. He saw him from afar in a recess of the
granite rocks, lying carelessly extended in the sun, his head on a
tuft of mossy grass, his feet gracefully drawn up beneath him. So
lying, Etienne was like a swallow at rest. As soon as the tall old man
appeared upon the beach, the sound of his steps mingling faintly with
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