| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: you see me at that final awakening, in 1819? The drama of 'The
Brothers at enmity' is a rose-water tragedy beside that of a mother
and daughter placed as we then were. But I braved them all, my mother,
my husband, the world, by public coquetries which society talked of,--
and heaven knows how it talked! You can see, my friend, how the men
with whom I was accused of folly were to me the dagger with which to
stab my enemies. Thinking only of my vengeance, I did not see or feel
the wounds I was inflicting on myself. Innocent as a child, I was
thought a wicked woman, the worst of women, and I knew nothing of it!
The world is very foolish, very blind, very ignorant; it can penetrate
no secrets but those which amuse it and serve its malice: noble
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: old prince spent, as it came, in keeping up the traditions of a great
seigneur before the revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was
passed, the sums he received were all swallowed up in the luxury he
displayed in his vast hotel.
The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July
aged eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad
terms with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a
first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The
Duc de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the
Duchesse d'Uxelles. About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse
was forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Light as Sienna's?]
The same imputation is again cast on the Siennese, Purg. Canto
XIII. 141.
v. 121. Stricca.] This is said ironically. Stricca, Niccolo
Salimbeni, Caccia of Asciano, and Abbagliato, or Meo de
Folcacchieri, belonged to a company of prodigal and luxurious
young men in Sienna, called the "brigata godereccia." Niccolo
was the inventor of a new manner of using cloves in cookery, not
very well understood by the commentators, and which was termed
the "costuma ricca."
v. 125. In that garden.] Sienna.
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
