| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: treatment in the Liberal press. The name and title of Rubempre, to
which you have a claim through your mother, would become illustrious
through you, they said. The King gave his lordship instructions that
evening to prepare a patent authorizing the Sieur Lucien Chardon to
bear the arms and title of the Comtes de Rubempre, as grandson of the
last Count by the mother's side. 'Let us favor the songsters'
(chardonnerets) 'of Pindus,' said his Majesty, after reading your
sonnet on the Lily, which my cousin luckily remembered to give the
Duke.--'Especially when the King can work miracles, and change the
song-bird into an eagle,' M. de Navarreins replied."
Lucien's expansion of feeling would have softened the heart of any
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: effect of his laments.
The most interesting part of the proceedings was the cross-
examination of Mrs. Dyson by Mr. Clegg, the prisoner's solicitor.
Its purpose was to show that Mrs. Dyson had been on more intimate
terms with Peace than she was ready to admit, and that Dyson had
been shot by Peace in the course of a struggle, in which the
former had been the aggressor.
In the first part of his task Mr. Clegg met with some
success. Mrs. Dyson, whose memory was certainly eccentric--she
could not, she said, remember the year in which she had been
married--was obliged to admit that she had been in the habit of
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: of the one is almost always followed by the disappearance of the
other. The hero whom the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted
to-day should he have been overtaken by failure. The reaction,
indeed, will be the stronger in proportion as the prestige has
been great. The crowd in this case considers the fallen hero as
an equal, and takes its revenge for having bowed to a superiority
whose existence it no longer admits. While Robespierre was
causing the execution of his colleagues and of a great number of
his contemporaries, he possessed an immense prestige. When the
transposition of a few votes deprived him of power, he
immediately lost his prestige, and the crowd followed him to the
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