| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: exciting, a look, a word of tenderness, sufficed to pacify their angry
souls, and often they were never so near to a kiss as when they were
threatening each other vehemently.
Nevertheless, for the last five years, Ginevra, grown wiser than her
father, avoided such scenes. Her faithfulness, her devotion, the love
which filled her every thought, and her admirable good sense had got
the better of her temper. And yet, for all that, a very great evil had
resulted from her training; Ginevra lived with her father and mother
on the footing of an equality which is always dangerous.
Piombo and his wife, persons without education, had allowed Ginevra to
study as she pleased. Following her caprices as a young girl, she had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: another moment! She had flung an Indian shawl hastily over her bare
shoulders, covering herself with it completely, while it revealed the
bare outlines of the form beneath. She wore a loose gown trimmed with
snowy ruffles, which told plainly that her laundress' bills amounted
to something like two thousand francs in the course of a year. Her
dark curls escaped from beneath a bright Indian handkerchief, knotted
carelessly about her head after the fashion of Creole women. The bed
lay in disorder that told of broken slumber. A painter would have paid
money to stay a while to see the scene that I saw. Under the luxurious
hanging draperies, the pillow, crushed into the depths of an eider-
down quilt, its lace border standing out in contrast against the
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: of the great discovery. He had just seen to the secur-
ing of the anchor, and had remained forward idling
away a moment or two. The captain was in charge on
the bridge. With a slight yawn he had turned away
from his survey of the sea and had leaned his shoulders
against the fish davit.
These, properly speaking, were the very last moments
of ease he was to know on board the Sofala. All the
instants that came after were to be pregnant with pur-
pose and intolerable with perplexity. No more idle,
random thoughts; the discovery would put them on the
End of the Tether |
