| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: of it now, I hope, as I ought to do."--
Elinor tenderly invited her to be open.
"As for regret," said Marianne, "I have done with that,
as far as HE is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you
of what my feelings have been for him, but what they
are NOW.--At present, if I could be satisfied on one point,
if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS
acting a part, not ALWAYS deceiving me;--but above all,
if I could be assured that he never was so VERY wicked
as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story
of that unfortunate girl"--
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: "Martial, your fatuity cries out for a lesson. What! you, a civilian,
and so lucky as to be the husband-designate of Madame de Vaudremont, a
widow of two-and-twenty, burdened with four thousand napoleons a year
--a woman who slips such a diamond as this on your finger," he added,
taking the lawyer's left hand, which the young man complacently
allowed; "and, to crown all, you affect the Lovelace, just as if you
were a colonel and obliged to keep up the reputation of the military
in home quarters! Fie, fie! Only think of all you may lose."
"At any rate, I shall not lose my liberty," replied Martial, with a
forced laugh.
He cast a passionate glance at Madame de Vaudremont, who responded
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: turning about in obedience to the figures; he could read in some
faces, as in those of the Countess and his friend Martial, the secrets
of their agitation; and then, looking round, he wondered what
connection there could be between the gloomy looks of the Comte de
Soulanges, still seated on the sofa, and the plaintive expression of
the fair unknown, on whose features the joys of hope and the anguish
of involuntary dread were alternately legible. Montcornet stood like
the king of the feast. In this moving picture he saw a complete
presentment of the world, and he laughed at it as he found himself the
object of inviting smiles from a hundred beautiful and elegant women.
A Colonel of the Imperial Guard, a position equal to that of a
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