| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: Barlaensis!' -- 'Why Barlaensis?' -- 'After its grower, Van
Baerle,' will be the answer. -- 'And who is this Van
Baerle?' -- 'It is the same who has already produced five
new tulips: the Jane, the John de Witt, the Cornelius de
Witt, etc.' Well, that is what I call my ambition. It will
cause tears to no one. And people will talk of my Tulipa
nigra Barlaensis when perhaps my godfather, this sublime
politician, is only known from the tulip to which I have
given his name.
"Oh! these darling bulbs!
"When my tulip has flowered," Baerle continued in his
The Black Tulip |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: He was scarcely hidden before three raps sounded on the door. The holy
women looked into each other's eyes for counsel, and dared not say a
single word.
They seemed both to be about sixty years of age. They had lived out of
the world for forty years, and had grown so accustomed to the life of
the convent that they could scarcely imagine any other. To them, as to
plants kept in a hot-house, a change of air meant death. And so, when
the grating was broken down one morning, they knew with a shudder that
they were free. The effect produced by the Revolution upon their
simple souls is easy to imagine; it produced a temporary imbecility
not natural to them. They could not bring the ideas learned in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: seemed awkwardly conscious of his limbs, and addressed the Marquise
d'Espard as "mademoiselle." A light far brighter than the glare of the
chandeliers flashed from his eyes. At last he went out with the air of
a man who didn't know what he might do next.
"The Baron de Macumer is in love!" exclaimed Mme. de Maufrigneuse.
"Strange, isn't it, for a fallen minister?" replied my mother.
I had sufficient presence of mind myself to regard with curiosity
Mmes. de Maufrigneuse and d'Espard and my mother, as though they were
talking a foreign language and I wanted to know what it was all about,
but inwardly my soul sank in the waves of an intoxicating joy. There
is only one word to express what I felt, and that is: rapture. Such
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