| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: truth!"
Eugenie looked at her father with a sarcastic expression that stung
him.
"Eugenie, you are here, in my house,--in your father's house. If you
wish to stay here, you must submit yourself to me. The priests tell
you to obey me." Eugenie bowed her head. "You affront me in all I hold
most dear. I will not see you again until you submit. Go to your
chamber. You will stay there till I give you permission to leave it.
Nanon will bring you bread and water. You hear me--go!"
Eugenie burst into tears and fled up to her mother. Grandet, after
marching two or three times round the garden in the snow without
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: Cumnor had a theory that she had been a governess in some family
in which the poet visited and that, in consequence of her position,
there was from the first something unavowed, or rather something
positively clandestine, in their relations. I on the other hand
had hatched a little romance according to which she was the daughter
of an artist, a painter or a sculptor, who had left the western
world when the century was fresh, to study in the ancient schools.
It was essential to my hypothesis that this amiable man should have
lost his wife, should have been poor and unsuccessful and should
have had a second daughter, of a disposition quite different
from Juliana's. It was also indispensable that he should have been
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: her to discern them, and for them she put forth so much fascination
that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their scrutiny. This
enchanting veneer covered a careless heart; the opinion--common to
many young girls--that no one else dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be
able to understand the merits of her soul; and a pride based no less
on her birth than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming
sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she
spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, and
expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior birth.
Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she made every
effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious
|
