| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: bent up to the support of the argument which he was about to
sustain. Though a deceitful and ambitious man, he was not so
devoid of natural affection but that he was shocked at the part
he was about to act, in practising on the feelings of a dutiful
and affectionate child; but the recollections, that, if he
succeeded, his daughter would only be trepanned into an
advantageous match, and that, if he failed, he himself was a lost
man, were quite sufficient to drown all scruples.
He found Miss Vere seated by the window of her dressing-room, her
head reclining on her hand, and either sunk in slumber, or so
deeply engaged in meditation, that she did not hear the noise he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: her, and asked her for a dance. He treated her to cider and cake,
bought her a silk shawl, and then, thinking she had guessed his
purpose, offered to see her home. When they came to the end of a field
he threw her down brutally. But she grew frightened and screamed, and
he walked off.
One evening, on the road leading to Beaumont, she came upon a wagon
loaded with hay, and when she overtook it, she recognised Theodore. He
greeted her calmly, and asked her to forget what had happened between
them, as it "was all the fault of the drink."
She did not know what to reply and wished to run away.
Presently he began to speak of the harvest and of the notables of the
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: infected--nobles, citizens, soldiers. What avails persisting in our opinion,
when everything is changing around us? Oh, that some good genius would
suggest to Philip that it better becomes a monarch to govern burghers of
two different creeds, than to excite them to mutual destruction.
Regent. Never let me hear such words again. Full well I know that the
policy of statesmen rarely maintains truth and fidelity; that it excludes
from the heart candour, charity, toleration. In secular affairs, this is, alas!
only too true; but shall we trifle with God as we do with each other? Shall
we be indifferent to our established faith, for the sake of which so many
have sacrificed their lives? Shall we abandon it to these far-fetched,
uncertain, and self-contradicting heresies?
Egmont |
