| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: risked it now by this horrible perjury, but Mme. du Croisier must be
deceived, there was no other choice but death. Without losing a
moment, he dictated a form of receipt by which Mme. du Croisier
acknowledged payment of a hundred thousand crowns five days before the
fatal letter of exchange appeared; for he recollected that du Croisier
was away from home, superintending improvements on his wife's property
at the time.
"Now swear to me that you will declare before the examining magistrate
that you received the money on that date," he said, when Mme. du
Croisier had taken the notes and he held the receipt in his hand.
"It will be a lie, will it not?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the
whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it
was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and
sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused
revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a
light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked
at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly,
and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: This answer made all who were within hearing of it smile. The
seduction of Francoise de Rohan by the Duc de Nemours was the topic of
all conversations; but, as the duke was cousin to Francois II., and
doubly allied to the house of Valois through his mother, the Guises
regarded him more as the seduced than the seducer. Nevertheless, the
power of the house of Rohan was such that the Duc de Nemours was
obliged, after the death of Francois II., to leave France on
consequence of suits brought against him by the Rohans; which suits
the Guises settled. The duke's marriage with the Duchesse de Guise
after Poltrot's assassination of her husband in 1563, may explain the
question which she put to Amyot, by revealing the rivalry which must
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