| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: from sentry to sentry, from the castle to the Porte Saint-Leonard,
proved to the Chouans the alertness of the Blues, inasmuch as the
least accessible of their ramparts was so well guarded.
"It is she--and he," muttered Marie to herself.
To seek the marquis, follow his steps and overtake him, was a thought
that flashed like lightning through her mind. "I have no weapon!" she
cried. She remembered that on leaving Paris she had flung into a trunk
an elegant dagger formerly belonging to a sultana, which she had
jestingly brought with her to the theatre of war, as some persons take
note-books in which to jot down their travelling ideas; she was less
attracted by the prospect of shedding blood than by the pleasure of
The Chouans |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: morning.
Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in the
freedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not see
them.
At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black,
the cold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and
expired without a cry.
On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteen
hundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest
of the Mercenaries and whole tribes--in all twenty thousand soldiers,
or half of the army.
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: uneasy all that day to put my project in execution; and that
evening, meeting the Scots merchant in our walk about the town, I
again called upon him to aid me in it. When he found me resolute
he said that, on further thoughts, he could not but applaud the
design, and told me I should not go alone, but he would go with me;
but he would go first and bring a stout fellow, one of his
countrymen, to go also with us; "and one," said he, "as famous for
his zeal as you can desire any one to be against such devilish
things as these." So we agreed to go, only we three and my man-
servant, and resolved to put it in execution the following night
about midnight, with all possible secrecy.
Robinson Crusoe |
