| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: But she was not fainting this time. She was very much alive, for,
to Franz's great astonishment, she was busied at the packing of a
valise.
"Are you going away too?" asked Franz. Mrs. Bernauer answered in
a voice that was dull with weariness: "Yes, Franz, I am going away.
Will you please look up the time-tables of the Southern railroad
and let me know when the morning express leaves? And please order
a cab in time for it. I will depend upon you to look after the
house in my absence. You can imagine that it must be something
very important that takes me to Venice."
"To Venice? Why, what are you going to Venice for?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: gracious indulgence is shown to every form of error. The Duchess
sighed deeply, and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her
features.
"You will see strange things in our country, monsieur," she went on.
"Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one
buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a
dancer, as older men are miserly. We all create some happiness or some
madness for ourselves."
"Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for
which a revolution would be a radical cure," replied the physician.
"The Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: long day passed without an action or even a gesture that bore
testimony to her thoughts. She lay on a couch which she had made of
chairs and pillows. It was late in the evening when a few words
escaped her, as if involuntarily.
"My child," she said to Francine, "I understood yesterday what it was
to live for love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance.
Yes, I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him,
seduce him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to
despise me, at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my
lackey and my slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I
shall not be myself."
The Chouans |
