| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: which I give to-morrow for the bride and bridegroom.
The carnival will be a very gay one. The Duc and Duchesse de Soria are
in Paris, and their presence makes me a little uneasy. Marie Heredia
is certainly one of the most beautiful women in Europe, and I don't
like the way Felipe looks at her. Therefore I am doubly lavish of
sweetness and caresses. Every look and gesture speak the words which I
am careful my lips should not utter, "/She/ could not love like this!"
Heaven knows how lovely and fascinating I am! Yesterday Mme. de
Maufrigneuse said to me:
"Dear child, who can compete with you?"
Then I keep Felipe so well amused, that his sister-in-law must seem as
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: vengeance are many enough, and as a rule they are of this order--to
wit, murders committed without any startling sign of violence, without
bloodshed, bruises, marks of strangling, without any bungling of the
business, in short; if there seems to be no motive for the crime, it
most likely goes unpunished, especially if the death occurs among the
poorer classes. Murder is almost always denounced by its advanced
guards, by hatred or greed well known to those under whose eyes the
whole matter has passed. But in the case of the Cibots, no one save
the doctor had any interest in discovering the actual cause of death.
The little copper-faced tailor's wife adored her husband; he had no
money and no enemies; La Cibot's fortune and the marine-store dealer's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Something was up. And yet I couldn't believe that they would choose
this occasion for a scene--especially for the rather harrowing scene
that Gatsby had outlined in the garden.
The next day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest, of
the summer. As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the
hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush
at noon. The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion;
the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white
shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers,
lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry. Her pocket-book
slapped to the floor.
The Great Gatsby |
