| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: attaching but little importance to Mademoiselle Cormon's words; for
she fully believed that du Bousquier was forever lost in the old
maid's esteem after the revelation of that evening.
Soon the four tables were filled with their sixteen players. Four
persons were playing piquet,--an expensive game, at which the most
money was lost. Monsieur Choisnel, the procureur-du-roi, and two
ladies went into the boudoir for a game at backgammon. The glass
lustres were lighted; and then the flower of Mademoiselle Cormon's
company gathered before the fireplace, on sofas, and around the
tables, and each couple said to her as they arrived,--
"So you are going to-morrow to Prebaudet?"
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: existence. The capriciousness of love is also derived by him from an
attachment to some god in a former world. The singular remark that the
beloved is more affected than the lover at the final consummation of their
love, seems likewise to hint at a psychological truth.
It is difficult to exhaust the meanings of a work like the Phaedrus, which
indicates so much more than it expresses; and is full of inconsistencies
and ambiguities which were not perceived by Plato himself. For example,
when he is speaking of the soul does he mean the human or the divine soul?
and are they both equally self-moving and constructed on the same threefold
principle? We should certainly be disposed to reply that the self-motive
is to be attributed to God only; and on the other hand that the appetitive
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: his finding Jean there, weeks later when he was convalescing from
typhoid; of their escape and long wandering; of Jean's getting into
Holland, whence he would return by way of England. Of his own business,
of what he had done behind the lines after Jean had gone, he said
nothing. But his listeners knew and understood.
But his dispatches off, his story briefly told, Henri wandered out among
the men again. He was very happy. He had never thought to be so happy.
He felt the touch on his sleeves of hard brown, not overclean hands,
infinitely tender and caressing; and over there, as though she had never
gone, was Sara Lee, slightly flushed and very radiant.
And as though he also had never gone away, Henri pushed into the salle
|
