| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: abandoning the rest of the city, betook themselves to the Capitol, which
they fortified with the help of missiles and new works. One of their
principal cares was of their holy things, most of which they conveyed
into the Capitol. But the consecrated fire the vestal virgins took, and
fled with it, as likewise their other sacred things. Some write that
they have nothing in their charge but the ever-living fire which Numa
had ordained to be worshipped as the principle of all things; for fire
is the most active thing in nature, and all production is either motion,
or attended with motion; all the other parts of matter, so long as they
are without warmth, lie sluggish and dead, and require the accession of
a sort of soul or vitality in the principle of heat; and upon that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: concord or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and
his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real
correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to
everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult
sciences.
Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: Grassou, coming from Fougeres, and called simply "Fougeres" among his
brother-artists, who, at the present moment holds a place, as the
saying is, "in the sun," and who suggested the rather bitter
reflections by which this sketch of his life is introduced,--
reflections that are applicable to many other individuals of the tribe
of artists.
In 1832, Fougeres lived in the rue de Navarin, on the fourth floor of
one of those tall, narrow houses which resemble the obelisk of Luxor,
and possess an alley, a dark little stairway with dangerous turnings,
three windows only on each floor, and, within the building, a
courtyard, or, to speak more correctly, a square pit or well. Above
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