| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdes, on whose account some
fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris where to be seen, all
scented, with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking,
talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily.
"It's a white Mass," said Henri; "but I have the most excellent idea
in the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must
be bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read of course, and a love-
letter slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant,
/crudel tirano/, is certain to know the person who writes the letters
from London, and has ceased to be suspicious of them."
The day after, De Marsay came again to walk on the Terrasse des
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: let us down for ever into the dark and horrible
pit of misery and degradation from which we were
straining every nerve to escape. While our hearts
were crying lustily unto Him who is ever ready and
able to save, the conductor of the train that we had
just left stepped in. The officer asked if we came
by the train with him from Washington; he said
we did, and left the room. Just then the bell rang
for the train to leave; and had it been the sudden
shock of an earthquake it could not have given
us a greater thrill. The sound of the bell caused
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: "Monsieur is your old school-friend," she said to Louis.
He made no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one of those
spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing,
his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his
body forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent
head. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders
and hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of
the great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white.
He constantly rubbed one leg against the other, with a mechanical
action that nothing could have checked, and the incessant friction of
the bones made a doleful sound. Near him was a bed of moss on boards.
Louis Lambert |
