| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: all the furniture, not enough to fill ten lines in an inventory.
" 'My dear sir, if you had seen, as I then saw, that vast room,
papered and hung with brown, you would have felt yourself transported
into a scene of a romance. It was icy, nay more, funereal,' and he
lifted his hand with a theatrical gesture and paused.
" 'By dint of seeking, as I approached the bed, at last I saw Madame
de Merret, under the glimmer of the lamp, which fell on the pillows.
Her face was as yellow as wax, and as narrow as two folded hands. The
Countess had a lace cap showing her abundant hair, but as white as
linen thread. She was sitting up in bed, and seemed to keep upright
with great difficulty. Her large black eyes, dimmed by fever, no
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Bridge was upon the point of saying that he had seen him
and that he had ridden north, when it occurred to him that a
thousand dollars--even a thousand dollars Mex--was a great
deal of money, and that it would carry both himself and Billy
to Rio and leave something for pleasure beside.
Then up spoke a tall, thin man with the skin of a coffee
bean.
"I saw him, Senor Capitan," he cried. "He kept his horse in
my corral, and at night he came and took it out saying that
he was riding to visit a senorita. He fooled me, the scoundrel;
but I will tell you--he rode south. I saw him ride south with
The Mucker |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "A hundred thousand francs!" cried Steinbock, looking from the dealer
to Hortense, the Baron, and the Baroness.
"Yes, a hundred thousand francs," repeated the dealer. "If I were rich
enough, I would buy it of you myself for twenty thousand francs; for
by destroying the mould it would become a valuable property. But one
of the princes ought to pay thirty or forty thousand francs for such a
work to ornament his drawing-room. No man has ever succeeded in making
a clock satisfactory alike to the vulgar and to the connoisseur, and
this one, sir, solves the difficulty."
"This is for yourself, monsieur," said Hortense, giving six gold
pieces to the dealer.
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