| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: the mantelpiece, and carried it to a window, to obtain, by
journalistic help, an opinion of his own on the state of France.
A woman, even a prude, is never long embarrassed, however difficult
may be the position in which she finds herself; she seems always to
have on hand the fig-leaf which our mother Eve bequeathed to her.
Consequently, when Eugene, interpreting, in favor of his vanity, the
refusal to admit him, bowed to Madame de Listomere in a tolerably
intentional manner, she veiled her thoughts behind one of those
feminine smiles which are more impenetrable than the words of a king.
"Are you unwell, madame? You denied yourself to visitors."
"I am well, monsieur."
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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: at the tips of the slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to a chair
as if to bid Gaston be seated. He sat down, and she turned her face
questioningly towards him. Words cannot describe the subtlety of the
winning charm and inquiry in that gesture; deliberate in its
kindliness, gracious yet accurate in expression, it was the outcome of
early education and of a constant use and wont of the graciousness of
life. These movements of hers, so swift, so deft, succeeded each other
by the blending of a pretty woman's fastidious carelessness with the
high-bred manner of a great lady.
Mme. de Beauseant stood out in such strong contrast against the
automatons among whom he had spent two months of exile in that out-of-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: fanciful disguise, in order that the truth may be permitted to appear: 2.
as Benfey remarks, an erroneous example may illustrate a principle of
language as well as a true one: 3. many of these etymologies, as, for
example, that of dikaion, are indicated, by the manner in which Socrates
speaks of them, to have been current in his own age: 4. the philosophy of
language had not made such progress as would have justified Plato in
propounding real derivations. Like his master Socrates, he saw through the
hollowness of the incipient sciences of the day, and tries to move in a
circle apart from them, laying down the conditions under which they are to
be pursued, but, as in the Timaeus, cautious and tentative, when he is
speaking of actual phenomena. To have made etymologies seriously, would
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