| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: head gracefully, she added, "If that man ever ruins himself I'll tell
it in Pekin! He possesses a million in real estate. That's a former
purveyor to the imperial armies; a good sort of man, and rather
original. He married a second time by way of speculation; but for all
that he makes his wife extremely happy. He has a pretty daughter, whom
he refused for many years to recognize; but the death of his son,
unfortunately killed in a duel, has compelled him to take her home,
for he could not otherwise have children. The poor girl has suddenly
become one of the richest heiresses in Paris. The death of his son
threw the poor man into an agony of grief, which sometimes reappears
on the surface."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: be handsome to take your personal leave--but I have little heart to jest;
in truth, I am serious enough; for to be sunk, though but for an hour, in
your esteem Is a humiliation to which I know not how to submit. I shall
count every minute till your arrival.
S. V.
XXXVI
MR. DE COURCY TO LADY SUSAN
---- Hotel.
Why would you write to me? Why do you require particulars? But, since it
must be so, I am obliged to declare that all the accounts of your
misconduct during the life, and since the death of Mr. Vernon, which had
Lady Susan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians
(compare Arist. Pol.). And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a
danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like
the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on
monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all
men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is
to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him--he is the enemy of
the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace
with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this
world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not
to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and
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