| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: "Haggle! do you call it haggling to defend the interests of father and
mother and children?" said Mathias.
"Yes," said Paul, continuing his remarks to Madame Evangelista, "I
deplore the extravagance of my youth, which does not permit me to stop
this discussion, as you deplore your ignorance of business and your
involuntary wastefulness. God is my witness that I am not thinking, at
this moment, of myself. A simple life at Lanstrac does not alarm me;
but how can I ask Mademoiselle Natalie to renounce her tastes, her
habits? Her very existence would be changed."
"Where did Evangelista get his millions?" said the widow.
"Monsieur Evangelista was in business," replied the old notary; "he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: touched by the moonlight, had only just appeared to him. His step woke
the echoes of the silent streets, but he met no one until he came to
the shop of a weaver, who was still at work. From him he inquired his
way to the mayor's house, and the way-worn recruit soon found himself
seated in the porch of that establishment, waiting for the billet he
had asked for. Instead of receiving it at once, he was summoned to the
mayor's presence, where he found himself the object of minute
observation. The young man was good-looking, and belonged, evidently,
to a distinguished family. His air and manner were those of the
nobility. The intelligence of a good education was in his face.
"What is your name?" asked the mayor, giving him a shrewd and meaning
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: exquisite settings of the life of leisure: the long white house
hidden in camellias and cypresses above the lake, or the great
rooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the canal always
playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come to
imagine that these places really belonged to them, that they
would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the
frame of other people's wealth .... That, again, was the curse
of her love of beauty, the way she always took to it as if it
belonged to her!
Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better
that it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use
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