| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: dead already. It is for them that I feed my horse and don't eat
myself. Have you any food,--a mere crust? It is thirty hours since
anything has gone into my stomach, and yet I have fought like a madman
--just to keep a little warmth and courage in me."
"Poor Philippe, I have nothing--nothing! But where's your general,--in
this house?"
"No, don't go there; the place is full of wounded. Go up the street;
you'll find on your left a sort of pig-pen; the general is there.
Good-bye, old fellow. If we ever dance a trenis on a Paris floor--"
He did not end his sentence; the north wind blew at that moment with
such ferocity that the aide-de-camp hurried on to escape being frozen,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: sentiment that lay hid in a heart that was steeled, but not of
steel.
One day Bianchon spoke to Desplein of a poor water-carrier of the
Saint-Jacques district, who had a horrible disease caused by
fatigue and want; this wretched Auvergnat had had nothing but
potatoes to eat during the dreadful winter of 1821. Desplein left
all his visits, and at the risk of killing his horse, he rushed
off, followed by Bianchon, to the poor man's dwelling, and saw,
himself, to his being removed to a sick house, founded by the
famous Dubois in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Then he went to attend
the man, and when he had cured him he gave him the necessary sum
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught
the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously
turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry.
I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd
recognition of my superiority--my accomplishments and my function--
in her patience under my pain. She offered her mind to my
disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch's broth and proposed it
with assurance, she would have held out a large clean saucepan.
This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that,
in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point
of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such
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