| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: movable property. No one when he has got sufficient furniture for his
house dreams of making further purchases on this head, but of silver
no one ever yet possessed so much that he was forced to cry "enough."
On the contrary, if ever anybody does become possessed of an
immoderate amount he finds as much pleasure in digging a hole in the
ground and hoarding it as in the actual employment of it. And from a
wider point of view: when a state is prosperous there is nothing which
people so much desire as silver. The men want money to expend on
beautiful armour and fine horses, and houses, and sumptuous
paraphenalia[6] of all sorts. The women betake themselves to expensive
apparel and ornaments of gold. Or when states are sick,[7] either
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: under pain of sudden death. I was as thin as an asparagus stalk when I
was seventeen, and pretty too--I may say so now. So I married
Jeanrenaud, a good fellow, and headman on the salt-barges. I had my
boy, who is a fine young man; he is my pride, and it is not holding
myself cheap to say he is my best piece of work. My little Jeanrenaud
was a soldier who did Napoleon credit, and who served in the Imperial
Guard. But, alas! at the death of my old man, who was drowned, times
changed for the worse. I had the smallpox. I was kept two years in my
room without stirring, and I came out of it the size you see me,
hideous for ever, and as wretched as could be. These are my seductive
arts."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: had their houses, for this new quarter of the town was near to
Plessis, the usual residence of the king, to whom the courtiers, if
sent for, could go in a moment. The last house in this street was also
the last in the town. It belonged to Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst, an
old Brabantian merchant, to whom King Louis XI. gave his utmost
confidence in those financial transactions which his crafty policy
induced him to undertake outside of his own kingdom.
Observing the outline of the houses occupied respectively by Maitre
Cornelius and by the Comte de Poitiers, it was easy to believe that
the same architect had built them both and destined them for the use
of tyrants. Each was sinister in aspect, resembling a small fortress,
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