| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: staked other people's money, not their own upon the gaming-table of
business speculation.
This was the case with Fendant and Cavalier. Cavalier brought his
experience, Fendant his industry; the capital was a joint-stock
affair, and very accurately described by that word, for it consisted
in a few thousand francs scraped together with difficulty by the
mistresses of the pair. Out of this fund they allowed each other a
fairly handsome salary, and scrupulously spent it all in dinners to
journalists and authors, or at the theatre, where their business was
transacted, as they said. This questionably honest couple were both
supposed to be clever men of business, but Fendant was more slippery
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: This eminent priest united in himself great Christian modesty and a
noble character. Without pride or ambition he remained at his post and
did his duty in the midst of perils. The liberals of the town were
ignorant of the motives of his conduct; they claimed him as being of
their opinions and considered him a patriot,--a word which meant
revolutionist in Catholic minds. Loved by his inferiors, who dared
not, however, proclaim his merits, feared by his equals who kept watch
upon him, he was a source of embarrassment to the bishop. His virtues
and his knowledge, envied, no doubt, prevented persecution; it was
impossible to complain of him, though he criticized frankly the
political blunders by which both the throne and the clergy mutually
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: vices of a courtier, all the nobleness of developing womanhood.
She trusted nothing and no one, yet there were times when she
quitted her sceptical attitude for a submissive credulity.
How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in
whom the play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to
produce a poetic confusion? For in her there shone a divine
brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her bewildering
characteristics in a certain completeness and unity informed by
her charm. Nothing was feigned. The passion or semi-passion,
the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the
coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all spontaneous
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