| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: on to the place of his doom, now and again shaking his head
fiercely to free himself from the torment of the insects which
buzzed about it.
I looked upon him and wondered. I looked again and knew. Suddenly
there rose before my mind a vision of that gloomy vault in Seville,
of a woman, young and lovely, draped in cerements, and of a thin-
faced black-robed friar who smote her upon the lips with his ivory
crucifix and cursed her for a blaspheming heretic. There before me
was the man. Isabella de Siguenza had prayed that a fate like to
her own fate should befall him, and it was upon him now. Nor
indeed, remembering all that had been, was I minded to avert it,
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: the Voltairean chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility
and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized
each other by their generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as
unctuous with the abbe as he was paternal with the grisettes.
Some persons may fancy that Mademoiselle Cormon used every means to
attain her end; and that among the legitimate lures of womanhood she
devoted herself to dress, wore low-necked gowns, and employed the
negative coquetries of a magnificent display of arms. Not at all! She
was as heroic and immovable in her high-necked chemisette as a sentry
in his box. Her gowns, bonnets, and chiffons were all cut and made by
the dressmaker and the milliner of Alencon, two hump-backed sisters,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had
it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I
want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it
the elements of life, of a new life, VITA NUOVA for me. Of all
things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by
surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost
all things, that one knows that one possesses it.
Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I
ought to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as
that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external
sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an
|
