| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: men, as greedy as the women of these translucent pebbles, displayed
them no less lavishly. Possibly the necessity for carrying plunder in
the most portable form made gems the fashion in the army. A man was
not ridiculous then, as he would be now, if his shirt-frill or his
fingers blazed with large diamonds. Murat, an Oriental by nature, set
the example of preposterous luxury to modern soldiers.
The Comte de Gondreville, formerly known as Citizen Malin, whose
elevation had made him famous, having become a Lucullus of the
Conservative Senate, which "conserved" nothing, had postponed an
entertainment in honor of the peace only that he might the better pay
his court to Napoleon by his efforts to eclipse those flatterers who
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: expostulations and tender reproaches to the woman he loved. This
he delivered to her secretly at the next opportunity. She
received it from him with a smile, which scared all doubts of her
frailty from his mind, and with a pressure of his hand which
awoke the tenderest feelings in his heart.
He was now convinced her husband had allowed jealousy to blind
him, and had magnified his unworthy suspicions to assurances of
guilt. Is this view Hamilton was fully confirmed by a letter he
received from her the following day in answer to his own. "Are
you not," said she, "ashamed to give any credit to the visions of
a jealous fellow, who brought nothing else with him from Italy?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: G----M---- was too desperate a project, calculated only to ruin
me, and without the slightest probability of succeeding. But it
seemed to me that if I could ensure a moment's interview with
her, I could not fail to regain my influence over her affections.
I so well knew how to excite her sensibilities! I was so
confident of her love for me! The very whim even of sending me a
pretty woman by way of consoling me, I would stake my existence,
was her idea, and that it was the suggestion of her own sincere
sympathy for my sufferings.
"I resolved to exert every nerve to procure an interview. After
a multitude of plans which I canvassed one after another, I fixed
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