| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: just received in these words may serve me for an abiding rule of life.
I left Spain, a fugitive and penniless, but I have to-day received
from my family a sum sufficient for my needs. You will allow me to
send some poor Spaniard in my place."
In other words, he seemed to me to say, "This little game must stop."
He rose with an air of marvelous dignity, and left me quite upset by
such unheard-of delicacy in a man of his class. He went downstairs and
asked to speak with my father.
At dinner my father said to me with a smile:
"Louise, you have been learning Spanish from an ex-minister and a man
condemned to death."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: am bound like some poor beast to a stake; I am amazed that I have been
able to throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us. Intoxicate me,
then kill me! Ah, no, no!" she cried, joining her hands, "do not kill
me! I love life! Life is fair to me! If I am a slave, I am a queen
too. I could beguile you with words, tell you that I love you alone,
prove it to you, profit by my momentary empire to say to you: 'Take me
as one tastes the perfume of a flower when one passes it in a king's
garden.' Then, after having used the cunning eloquence of woman and
soared on the wings of pleasure, after having quenched my thirst, I
could have you cast into a pit, where none could find you, which has
been made to gratify vengeance without having to fear that of the law,
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: some slices of cake very appropriately called "leaden cake." "Finot,
my dear and witty friend, you can render a great service to our
gracious queen by letting loose a few dogs upon the men we were
talking of. You have against you," he said to Rabourdin, lowering his
voice so as to be heard only by the three persons whom he addressed,
"a set of usurers and priests--money and the church. The article in
the liberal journal was instituted by an old money-lender to whom the
paper was under obligations; but the young fellow who wrote it cares
nothing about it. The paper is about to change hands, and in three
days more will be on our side. The royalist opposition,--for we have,
thanks to Monsieur de Chateaubriand, a royalist opposition, that is to
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