| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: were written at Mme. du Bruel's express desire. She insisted that her
husband should purchase the hotel on which she had spent so much,
where she had housed five hundred thousand francs' worth of furniture.
Wherefore Tullia never enters into explanations; she understands the
sovereign woman's reason to admiration.
" 'People made a good deal of fun of Cursy,' said she; 'but, as a
matter of fact, he found this house in the eighteenth century rouge-
box, powder, puffs, and spangles. He would never have thought of it
but for me,' she added, burying herself in the cushions in her
fireside corner.
"She delivered herself thus on her return from a first night. Du
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs,
only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the
mental or moral training to attain independence in any other
way, was she to blame for seeking it on such terms?
Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back,
would find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it
without him. If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she
would cease to strain her eyes into the future, would seize upon
the present moment and plunge into it to the very bottom of
oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then--money or freedom
or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: have suspected him of recovering some piece of lost property, some
modern equivalent of the marquise's poodle; you would have recognized
the assiduous gallantry of the "man of the Empire" returning in
triumph from his mission to some charming woman of sixty, reluctant as
yet to dispense with the daily visit of her elderly /attentif/.
In Paris only among great cities will you see such spectacles as this;
for of her boulevards Paris makes a stage where a never-ending drama
is played gratuitously by the French nation in the interests of Art.
In spite of the rashly assumed spencer, you would scarcely have
thought, after a glance at the contours of the man's bony frame, that
this was an artist--that conventional type which is privileged, in
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