| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: quarrel over his irreligious and dissipated conduct, would even go
into his master's room, as a matter of form, when the Count was not
there, and come back with the same formula in reply.
The aggrieved wife was always on the watch for her husband's return,
and standing on the steps so as to meet him like an embodiment of
remorse. The petty aggressiveness which lies at the root of the
monastic temper was the foundation of Madame de Granville's; she was
now five-and-thirty, and looked forty. When the count was compelled by
decency to speak to his wife or to dine at home, she was only too well
pleased to inflict her company upon him, with her acid-sweet remarks
and the intolerable dulness of her narrow-minded circle, and she tried
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: after the first blow, and then slipped between the heavy lid and the
pavement a kind of hook. He braced his long, lean arms, raised the
cover slowly, and in a moment it lay flat upon the stones. The
bystanders admired the strength of the old man.
Under the bronze lid was a wooden trap-door of the same size. At a
blow of the fist it folded back, allowing a wide hole to be seen, the
mouth of an immense pit, with a flight of winding steps leading down
into the darkness. Those that bent over to peer into the cavern beheld
a vague and terrifying shape in its depths.
This proved to be a human being, lying on the ground. His long locks
hung over a camel's-hair robe that covered his shoulders. Slowly he
Herodias |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: appointed day and that he might expect her with certainty.
"We then resolved, that I should instantly hire lodgings in some
village on the other side of Paris, and that I should take our
luggage with me; that in the afternoon of the following day,
which was the time appointed, she should go to Paris; that, after
receiving G---- M----'s presents, she should earnestly entreat
him to take her to the theatre; that she should carry with her as
large a portion of the money as she could, and charge my servant
with the remainder, for it was agreed that he was to accompany
her. He was the man who had rescued her from the Magdalen, and
he was devotedly attached to us. I was to be with a
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