| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: hall, around which were grouped the guards, their captain, a few
courtiers, and Christophe carrying his box of furs, the Chancellor
Olivier, protector and predecessor of l'Hopital, in the robes which
the chancellors of France have always worn, was walking up and down
with the Cardinal de Tournon, who had recently returned from Rome. The
pair were exchanging a few whispered sentences in the midst of great
attention from the lords of the court, massed against the wall which
separated the /salle des gardes/ from the royal bedroom, like a living
tapestry backed by the rich tapestry of art crowded by a thousand
personages. In spite of the present grave events, the court presented
the appearance of all courts in all lands, at all epochs, and in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: love, purifying its transports, turning them to something almost holy;
wonderful secret of womanhood, the exquisite gift that Nature so
seldom bestows. And the Vicomtesse, on her side, listening to the ring
of sincerity in Gaston's voice, while he told of his youthful
troubles, began to understand all that grown children of five-and-
twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work has kept them alike from
corrupting influences and intercourse with men and women of the world
whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the fair qualities
of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman's dreams, a man unspoiled as
yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow selfishness
which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion, self-sacrifice,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: green bowers for nobody to visit, and the silence of death was
only broken by the throbbing of the sea.
The airs were very light, their speed was small; the heat
intense. The decks were scorching underfoot, the sun flamed
overhead, brazen, out of a brazen sky; the pitch bubbled in the
seams, and the brains in the brain-pan. And all the while the
excitement of the three adventurers glowed about their bones
like a fever. They whispered, and nodded, and pointed, and put
mouth to ear, with a singular instinct of secrecy, approaching
that island underhand like eavesdroppers and thieves; and even
Davis from the cross-trees gave his orders mostly by gestures.
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