| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: "Louis, write it all down; that will change the nature of the fever
within you."
So I have written you this narrative, dear uncle; but the shock of
such an event has made me lose the calmness I was beginning to gain
from sea-bathing and our stay in this place.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Note: A Drama on the Seashore is also known as A Seaside Tragedy and
is referred to by that title in other addendums.
Cambremer, Pierre
Beatrix
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: sparrows utter their small cries, and the statues look on forever.
Here, then, in a seat opposite the gallery entrance, I set to work
on the events of the last night, to disengage (if it were possible)
truth from fiction.
The house, by daylight, had proved to be six stories high, the
same as ever. I could find, with all my architectural
experience, no room in its altitude for those interminable
stairways, no width between its walls for that long corridor,
where I had tramped at night. And there was yet a greater
difficulty. I had read somewhere an aphorism that everything
may be false to itself save human nature. A house might
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: house? Give the thing a trial? Not once. He has
got hold now of a Madras cook--a blamed fraud
that I hunted out of my cookhouse with a rattan.
He was not fit to cook for white men. No, not for
the white men's dogs either; but, see, any damned
native that can boil a pot of rice is good enough for
Mr. Falk. Rice and a little fish he buys for a few
cents from the fishing boats outside is what he lives
on. You would hardly credit it--eh? A white
man, too. . . ."
He wiped his lips, using the napkin with indig-
Falk |
