| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: alone will be uneasy, you will know nothing of the state of her heart.
The great ladies of old flaunted their love-affairs, with newspapers
and advertisements; in these days the lady has her little passion
neatly ruled like a sheet of music with its crotchets and quavers and
minims, its rests, its pauses, its sharps to sign the key. A mere weak
women, she is anxious not to compromise her love, or her husband, or
the future of her children. Name, position, and fortune are no longer
flags so respected as to protect all kinds of merchandise on board.
The whole aristocracy no longer advances in a body to screen the lady.
She has not, like the great lady of the past, the demeanor of lofty
antagonism; she can crush nothing under foot, it is she who would be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the wall. The
author of the work informed those to come after him that he had loosed
two stones in the lowest course of masonry and hollowed out eleven
feet beyond underground. As he went on with his excavations, it became
necessary to spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor
of his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure
that the structure of the building was such that no watch was needed
below, the level of the Pozzi dungeons being several steps below the
threshold, it was possible gradually to raise the earthen floor
without exciting the warder's suspicions.
"The tremendous labor had profited nothing--nothing at least to him
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: ("Jesuit, you can't crush us," thought she. "I understand your
civility.")
A moment's silence.
"I did not think my nephew's conduct in this affair quite the thing,"
she added; "but naval men must be excused; they know nothing of law."
("Come, we had better make peace," thought she; "we sha'n't gain
anything by battling in this way.")
A slight smile wandered over the priests face and was lost in its
wrinkles.
"He has done us the service of getting a proper estimate on the value
of those paintings," he said, looking up at the pictures. "They will
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