| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: studious or unappreciated, and the ardent or /passionne/."
"That will do!" repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an authoritative
gesture. "You are setting my nerves on edge."
"To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make the plunge
into the gallant regions of his character, or you will not understand
the peculiar genius of an admirable representative of a certain
section of mischievous youth--youth strong enough, be it said, to
laugh at the position in which it is put by those in power; shrewd
enough to do no work, since work profiteth nothing; yet so full of
life that it fastens upon pleasure--the one thing that cannot be taken
away. And meanwhile a bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: himself agreeable. If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my
dear boy, you'd be astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often
it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of
artillery, or show himself at a ball in tight clothes. Sometimes a
mere turn of the head, a melancholy attitude, makes them suppose a
man's whole life; they'll invent a romance to match the hero--who is
often a mere brute, but the marriage is made. Watch the Chevalier de
Valois: study him; copy his manners; see with what ease he presents
himself; he never puts on a stiff air, as you do. Talk a little more;
one would really think you didn't know anything,--you, who know Hebrew
by heart."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Like the old man of the sea's
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaur's hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
"He is a charming man"--"But after all what did he mean?"--
"His pointed ears ... He must be unbalanced,"--
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