| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: Italian nature. But neither the Duchess nor the two young men paid any
attention to the ovation. Clarina began again.
The Duchess feared that she was seeing her Emilio for the last time.
As to the Prince: in the presence of the Duchess, the sovereign
divinity who lifted him to the skies, he had forgotten where he was,
he no longer heard the voice of the woman who had initiated him into
the mysteries of earthly pleasure, for deep dejection made his ears
tingle with a chorus of plaintive voices, half-drowned in a rushing
noise as of pouring rain.
Vendramin saw himself in an ancient Venetian costume, looking on at
the ceremony of the /Bucentaur/. The Frenchman, who plainly discerned
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: "Emma McChesney, when you talk like that, so coolly, so evenly,
so--so darned mentally, I sometimes wonder if you really----"
"Don't say it, T. A. Because you don't mean it. I've had to
fight for most of my happiness. I've never before found it ready
at hand. I've always had to dig for it with a shovel and a spade
and a pickax, and then blast. I had almost twenty years of
that-- from the time I was eighteen until I was thirty-eight.
It taught me to take my happiness seriously and my troubles
lightly." She shut her eyes for a moment, and her voice was
very low and very deep and very vibrant. "So, when I'm coolest
and evenest and most mental, T. A., you may know that I've struck
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: who had sinned solely through ignorance, that he left the room hastily
lest she should see his pity.
Joseph returned to his mother's room about two hours after her
confessor had left her. He had been to a friend to borrow the
necessary money to pay his most pressing debts, and he came in on
tiptoe, thinking that his mother was asleep. He sat down in an
armchair without her seeing him; but he sprang up with a cold chill
running through him as he heard her say, in a voice broken with
sobs,--
"Will he forgive me?"
"What is it, mother?" he exclaimed, shocked at the stricken face of
|
