| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: it would be necessary to share the state of half sensuous delight into
which the events of the morning had plunged us. Admire for a long time
some pretty dove with iridescent colors, perched on a swaying branch
above a spring, and you will give a cry of pain when you see a hawk
swooping down upon her, driving its steel claws into her breast, and
bearing her away with murderous rapidity. When we had advanced a step
or two into an open space which lay before what seemed to be a grotto,
a sort of esplanade placed a hundred feet above the ocean, and
protected from its fury by buttresses of rock, we suddenly experienced
an electrical shudder, something resembling the shock of a sudden
noise awaking us in the dead of night.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in
subtilties of argument. We are employed in a search of which both
are equally to enjoy the success or suffer by the miscarriage; it
is therefore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude
too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its
institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life
cannot be the gift of Heaven? The world must be peopled by
marriage or peopled without it."
"How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not my care
and need not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation
should omit to leave successors behind them; we are not now
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: who lived so near the time, were misinformed in an occurrence of
such notoriety. According to them, after he had long been a
faithful steward to Raymond, when an account was required from
him of the revenues whichhe had carefully husbanded, and his
master as lavishly disbursed, "He demanded the little mule, the
staff, and the scrip, with which he had first entered into the
count's service, a stranger pilgrim from the shrine of St. James
in Galicia, and parted as he came; nor was it ever known whence
he was or wither he went." G. Villani, 1. vi. c. 92.
v. 135. Four daughters.] Of the four daughters of Raymond
Berenger, Margaret, the eldest, was married to Louis IX of
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
