| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: nothing from my family, nor from my home, beyond my inadequate
allowance. In short, at that time, I breakfasted off a roll which
the baker in the Rue du Petit-Lion sold me cheap because it was
left from yesterday or the day before, and I crumbled it into
milk; thus my morning meal cost me but two sous. I dined only
every other day in a boarding-house where the meal cost me
sixteen sous. You know as well as I what care I must have taken
of my clothes and shoes. I hardly know whether in later life we
feel grief so deep when a colleague plays us false as we have
known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of a gaping seam
in a shoe, or hearing the armhole of a coat split, I drank
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: blacksmith. In a moment the top of the delicate piece of
furniture was smashed and there lay exposed in a drawer eighty
half-imperials. Gold coin was a rare sight in Russia even at
that time; it put the peasants beside themselves. "There must be
more of that in the house and we shall have it," yelled the ex-
soldier blacksmith. "This is war time." The others were already
shouting out of the window urging the crowd to come back and
help. The priest, abandoned suddenly at the gate, flung his arms
up and hurried away so as not to see what was going to happen.
In their search for money that bucolic mob smashed everything in
the house, ripping with knives, splitting with hatchets, so that,
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: that reminded him of past domestic festivals.
"This was my wife's present to me on the first anniversary of our
wedding day," he said to Mme. Vauquer, as he put away a little
silver posset dish, with two turtle-doves billing on the cover.
"Poor dear! she spent on it all the money she had saved before we
were married. Do you know, I would sooner scratch the earth with
my nails for a living, madame, than part with that. But I shall
be able to take my coffee out of it every morning for the rest of
my days, thank the Lord! I am not to be pitied. There's not much
fear of my starving for some time to come."
Finally, Mme. Vauquer's magpie's eye had discovered and read
Father Goriot |
