| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: muscles were made to be quiescent as well as to act. His manner was
more audacious than noble. His nose, though thin, turned up and
snuffed battle. He seemed agile and capable. You would have known him
in all ages for the leader of a party. If he were not of the
Reformation, he might have been Pizarro, Fernando Cortez, or Morgan
the Exterminator,--a man of violent action of some kind.
The fourth man, sitting on a thwart wrapped in his cloak, belonged,
evidently, to the highest portion of society. The fineness of his
linen, its cut, the material and scent of his clothing, the style and
skin of his gloves, showed him to be a man of courts, just as his
bearing, his haughtiness, his composure and his all-embracing glance
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: - that is, after he had found out all there was to be found out
about his affairs and his habits.
Just a week after the murder, on Saturday evening therefore, the
snow was whirling merrily about the gables and cupolas of the
Archducal hunting castle. The weather-vanes groaned and the old
trees in the park bent their tall tops under the mad wind which
swept across the earth and tore the protecting snow covering from
their branches. It was a stormy evening, not one to be out in if
a man had a warm corner in which to hide.
An old peddler was trying to find shelter from the rapidly
increasing storm under the lea of the castle wall. He crouched so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: contempt is more than I can bear. A man should die untainted. When
I saw you for the first time I loved you as we love a woman whom
we shall love forever, even though she be unfaithful to us. I
loved you thus,--I, the friend of the man you had chosen and were
about to marry; I, poor; I, the steward,--a voluntary service, but
still the steward of your household.
"In this immense misfortune I found a happy life. To be to you an
indispensable machine, to know myself useful to your comfort, your
luxury, has been the source of deep enjoyments. If these
enjoyments were great when I thought only of Adam, think what they
were to my soul when the woman I loved was the mainspring of all I
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