| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: sombre roughness.
'Your mother's illness,' he resumed, 'had engaged too great a
portion of my time; my business in the city had lain too long
at the mercy of ignorant underlings; my head, my taste, my
unequalled knowledge of the more precious stones, that art by
which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a
sapphire from a ruby, and tell at a glance in what quarter of
the earth a gem was disinterred - all these had been too long
absent from the conduct of affairs. Teresa, I was
insolvent.'
'What matters that?' I cried. 'What matters poverty, if we
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large commercial
relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew Italian, and
replied in the same language:--
"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil
happen to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of
eighteen?"
"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her
face again.
"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.
They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: for return, allowed Oscar to seize the viscount, whom he flung across
his horse, and carried off at full gallop,--receiving, as he did so,
two slashes from yataghans on his left arm.
Oscar's conduct on this occasion was rewarded with the officer's cross
of the Legion of honor, and by his promotion to the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. He took the most affectionate care of the Vicomte
de Serizy, whose mother came to meet him on the arrival of the
regiment at Toulon, where, as we know, the young man died of his
wounds.
The Comtesse de Serizy had not separated her son from the man who had
shown him such devotion. Oscar himself was so seriously wounded that
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