| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: the scenes of weeping and despair brought about by her long
resistance.
At last came an awful night when her mother, pale and dying, threw
herself at her daughter's feet. Jeanne could save Chaverny's life by
yielding; she yielded. It was night. The count, arriving bloody from
the battlefield was there; all was ready, the priest, the altar, the
torches! Jeanne belonged henceforth to misery. Scarcely had she time
to say to her young cousin who was set at liberty:--
"Georges, if you love me, never see me again!"
She heard the departing steps of her lover, whom, in truth, she never
saw again; but in the depths of her heart she still kept sacred his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in
the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful
country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!"
If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the
reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes
through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the
place where the strap used to be.
[I was all the time preparing for my grand COUP, you understand;
but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued, -
always in illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: Louis Lambert was slightly built, nearly five feet in height; his face
was tanned, and his hands were burnt brown by the sun, giving him an
appearance of manly vigor, which, in fact, he did not possess. Indeed,
two months after he came to the college, when studying in the
classroom had faded his vivid, so to speak, vegetable coloring, he
became as pale and white as a woman.
His head was unusually large. His hair, of a fine, bright black in
masses of curls, gave wonderful beauty to his brow, of which the
proportions were extraordinary even to us heedless boys, knowing
nothing, as may be supposed, of the auguries of phrenology, a science
still in its cradle. The distinction of this prophetic brow lay
Louis Lambert |
