| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: but instead of resolutely facing and vanquishing the first
skirmishings of adverse fortune, Cesar employed his whole mind in the
effort to keep his wife, the only person able to advise him, from
knowing anything about them. He guarded the very threshold of his
door, and set a watch on all around him. He took Celestin into
confidence so far as to admit a momentary embarrassment, and Celestin
examined him with an amazed and inquisitive look. In his eyes Cesar
lessened, as men lessen in presence of disasters when accustomed only
to success, and when their whole mental strength consists of knowledge
which commonplace minds acquire through routine.
Menaced as he was on so many sides at once, and without the energy or
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyes
were gray, fringed with black lashes,--a charming contrast, which made
their expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the more
observable; the circle round the eyes showed marks of fatigue, but the
artistic manner in which she could turn her eyeballs, right and left,
or up and down, to observe, or seem to mediate, the way in which she
could hold them fixed, casting out their vivid fire without moving her
head, without taking from her face its absolute immovability (a
manoeuvre learned upon the stage), and the vivacity of their glance,
as she looked about a theatre in search of a friend, made her eyes the
most terrible, also the softest, in short, the most extraordinary eyes
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: them. Free ingress had thus been afforded to two stray ponies, a
goat, and a tramp, who lay asleep in the grass. His wife sat
near, watching him.
"I have a mind to turn back," said Sir Charles, looking about him
in disgust. " The place is scandalously neglected. Look at that
rascal asleep within full view of the windows."
"I admire his cheek," said Erskine. "Nice pair of ponies, too."
Sallust's House was square and painted cinnamon color. Beneath
the cornice was a yellow frieze with figures of dancing children,
imitated from the works of Donatello, and very unskilfully
executed. There was a meagre portico of four columns, painted
|
