| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: "Let us pass from pure, unmingled Number to corporate Number. Your
geometry establishes that a straight line is the shortest way from one
point to another, but your astronomy proves that God has proceeded by
curves. Here, then, we find two truths equally proved by the same
science,--one by the testimony of your senses reinforced by the
telescope, the other by the testimony of your mind; and yet the one
contradicts the other. Man, liable to err, affirms one, and the Maker
of the worlds, whom, so far, you have not detected in error,
contradicts it. Who shall decide between rectalinear and curvilinear
geometry? between the theory of the straight line and that of the
curve? If, in His vast work, the mysterious Artificer, who knows how
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon
had just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the
face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the
adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she
nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the
personage she represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage
was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of
complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the
companionship of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full
of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The
husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: believed in evil only, might have feared that Etienne would some day
claim his rights, and, so fearing, might have flung him into the sea
with a stone around his neck. No son had ever less respect for a
mother than he. As soon as he could reason he had seen the low esteem
in which the duke held his wife. If the old man still retained some
forms of decency in his manners to the duchess, Maximilien,
unrestrained by his father, caused his mother many a grief.
Consequently, Bertrand was incessantly on the watch to prevent
Maximilien from seeing Etienne, whose existence was carefully
concealed. All the attendants of the castle cordially hated the
Marquis de Saint-Sever (the name and title borne by the younger
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