| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: best advantage; and men know very well when a toilet has been made to
please them. The old beau of the Empire, that handsome Thuillier,
overwhelmed her with compliments, assuring her she was queen of the
salon, but la Peyrade said infinitely more to the purpose by a look.
Flavie had expected, Sunday after Sunday, a declaration, saying to
herself at times:--
"He knows I am ruined and haven't a sou. Perhaps he is really pious."
Theodose did nothing rashly; like a wise musician, he had marked the
place in his symphony where he intended to tap his drum. When he saw
Colleville attempting to warn Thuillier against him, he fired his
broadside, cleverly prepared during the three or four months in which
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: In 1865, before the final breach with Turgénieff, he wrote,
again to Fet: "I do not like 'Enough'! A personal subjective
treatment is never good unless it is full of life and passion; but
the subjectivity in this case is full of lifeless suffering.
In the autumn of 1883, after Turgénieff's death, when
the family had gone into Moscow for the winter, my father stayed at
Yásnaya Polyána alone, with Agáfya
Mikháilovna, and set earnestly about reading through all
Turgénieff's works.
This is what he wrote to my mother at the time:
I am always thinking about Turgénieff. I am intensely
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: "What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her fingers in his.
She was silent.
"Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, passionate utterance,
"you have seen whether I fear death. You must know well enough
that I would as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air
as lay a finger on you without your free and full consent. But if
you care for me at all do not let me lose my life in a
misapprehension; for I love you better than the whole world; and
though I will die for you blithely, it would be like all the joys
of Paradise to live on and spend my life in your service."
As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly in the interior
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