| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: age when men rarely renounce their convictions--was due not merely to
his unfortunate residence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or
later, country folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de
Fontaine's new political conscience was also a result of the King's
advice and friendship. The philosophical prince had taken pleasure in
converting the Vendeen to the ideas required by the advance of the
nineteenth century, and the new aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII.
aimed at fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. The
legitimate King, who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted
in a contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon was
just as eager to satisfy the third estate and the creations of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: other Emotions previously felt were as nothing to this one. I
confess, without shame, that I felt the stiring of the Tender
Passion in my breast. Ah me, that it should have died ere it had
hardly lived!
"Where is the key?" I asked, in a wrapt but anxious tone.
He thought a while.
"Generaly," he said, "it hangs on a nail at the back entry. But the
chances are that Patten took it up to his room this time, for
safety, You'd know it if you saw it. It has some buttons off
sombody's batheing suit tied to it."
Here it was necessary to hide again, as father came stocking out,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: This judgment, so apparently just and clear-cut, though brief and
given by a man who fathomed a matter in which he had no interest,
alarmed Madame de Vandenesse.
"Do you take an interest in him?" asked her husband.
"Only as a man whose mind interests me and whose conversation I like."
This reply was made so naturally that the count suspected nothing.
The next day at four o'clock, Marie and Raoul had a long conversation
together, in a low voice, in Madame d'Espard's salon. The countess
expressed fears which Raoul dissipated, only too happy to destroy by
epigrams the conjugal judgment. Nathan had a revenge to take. He
characterized the count as narrow-minded, behind the age, a man who
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