| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: signpost, relieved himself of his gun and his gamebag, and heaved a
long sigh.
"France! such are thy deputies!" exclaimed Colonel de Sucy, laughing.
"Ah! my poor d'Albon, if you had been like me six years in the wilds
of Siberia--"
He said no more, but he raised his eyes to heaven as if that anguish
were between himself and God.
"Come, march on!" he added. "If you sit still you are lost."
"How can I, Philippe? It is an old magisterial habit to sit still. On
my honor! I'm tired out-- If I had only killed a hare!"
The two men presented a rather rare contrast: the public functionary
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: from being the butt of foul conspiracy, he is an object of anxiety to
all, lest evil should betide him; and so he pursues the even tenour of
his days in happiness exempt from fears and jealousy[17] and risk. But
the current of the tyrant's life runs differently. Day and night, I do
assure you, Simonides, he lives like one condemned by the general
verdict of mankind to die for his iniquity.
[14] Lit. "Honours would seem to be the outcome and expression of
conditions utterly remote from these, in fact their very
opposites."
[15] Cf. Napoleon's accost of Goethe, "Vous etes un homme," and "as
Goethe left the room, Napoleon repeated to Berthier and Daru,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: 'Margites.')
ALCIBIADES: How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet apply to
him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking
in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps
it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman
wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose
that Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the
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