| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: music, pale paper, and print--this was all that was coming to him,
some of its savor had gone; for the siren voice of Life had been speaking
with him face to face, and in his spirit, deep down, the love of the
world was restlessly answering it. Young Gaston showed more eagerness
than the Padre over this arrival of the vessel that might be bringing
Trovatore in the nick of time. Now he would have the chance, before he
took his leave, to help rehearse the new music with the choir. He would
be a missionary, too: a perfectly new experience.
"And you still forgive Verdi the sins of his youth?" he said to his host.
"I wonder if you could forgive mine?"
"Verdi has left his behind him," retorted the Padre.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of
social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of
all human beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the
priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had
insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one
had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove
to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the
minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the
self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified
himself in good faith. But those whom we offend by such unconscious
selfishness pay little heed to our real innocence; what they want is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: Heaven, I did not take the third of them. Gold ingots lay underneath
the table. I persuaded my companion to fill as many bags as we could
carry with the gold, and made him understand that this was our only
chance of escaping detection abroad.
" 'Pearls, rubies, and diamonds might be recognized,' I told him.
"Covetous though we were, we could not possibly take more than two
thousand livres weight of gold, which meant six journeys across the
prison to the gondola. The sentinel at the water gate was bribed with
a bag containing ten livres weight of gold; and as far as the two
gondoliers, they believed they were serving the Republic. At daybreak
we set out.
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