The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: prison to the gondola. The sentinel at the water gate was bribed with
a bag containing ten livres weight of gold; and as far as the two
gondoliers, they believed they were serving the Republic. At daybreak
we set out.
"Once upon the open sea, when I thought of that night, when I
recollected all that I had felt, when the vision of that great hoard
rose before my eyes, and I computed that I had left behind thirty
millions in silver, twenty in gold, and many more in diamonds, pearls,
and rubies--then a sort of madness began to work in me. I had the gold
fever.
"We landed at Smyrna and took ship at once for France. As we went on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: gilding put upon the word /liberalism/, a new pass-word for new
ambitions.
"If I have rightly understood what this meeting is for," said Jean
Violette, a stocking-maker, who had recently bought the Beauvisage
house, "it is to pledge ourselves to support, by employing every means
in our power, Monsieur Simon Giguet at the elections as deputy in
place of Comte Francois Keller. If each of us intends to coalesce in
this manner we have only to say plainly Yes or No on that point."
"That is going too quickly to the point! Political affairs do not
advance in that way, or there would be no politics at all!" cried
Pigoult, whose old grandfather, eighty-six years old, had just entered
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: the bell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge
who had been bribed to forsake him; the movements of the
doors were revivals of dead days.
Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once
unlocked the iron safe built into the wall, HIS,
Henchard's safe, made by an ingenious locksmith under his
direction. Farfrae drew thence the parcel, and other
papers, with apologies for not having returned them.
"Never mind," said Henchard drily. "The fact is they are
letters mostly....Yes," he went on, sitting down and
unfolding Lucetta's passionate bundle, "here they be. That
The Mayor of Casterbridge |