| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: Love-Caprice, Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All
is good in their eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, 'In the
sight of man, all women are equal.' The actual text is more vigorously
worded, but as in my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand nice
upon the letter.
"My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin George
Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine. The
Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted
about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are
distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by marriage to
the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a goodly number
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: In the name of this passing fancy of yours, for the sake of your
career and my own peace of mind, I bid you stay in your own
country; you must not spoil a fair and honorable life for an
illusion which, by its very nature, cannot last. At a later day,
when you have accomplished your real destiny, in the fully
developed manhood that awaits you, you will appreciate this answer
of mine, though to-day it may be that you blame its hardness. You
will turn with pleasure to an old woman whose friendship will
certainly be sweet and precious to you then; a friendship untried
by the extremes of passion and the disenchanting processes of
life; a friendship which noble thoughts and thoughts of religion
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: only record of Mme. de Bargeton's young beauty, a portrait worn on the
heart of the Marquis of Cante-Croix. For long afterwards she wept for
the young soldier, the colonel in his second campaign, for the heart
hot with love and glory that set a letter from Nais above Imperial
favor. The pain of those days cast a veil of sadness over her face, a
shadow that only vanished at the terrible age when a woman first
discovers with dismay that the best years of her life are over, and
she has had no joy of them; when she sees her roses wither, and the
longing for love is revived again with the desire to linger yet for a
little on the last smiles of youth. Her nobler qualities dealt so many
wounds to her soul at the moment when the cold of the provinces seized
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