| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: individuals to whom we owe the preservation of the divine afflatus
through the dark days when the life of art was in jeopardy. This noble
picture represents the Mary of Egypt as she prepares to pay for her
passage by the ship. It is a masterpiece, painted for Marie de
Medicis, and afterwards sold by her in the days of her distress.
"I like your saint," said the old man to Porbus, "and I will give you
ten golden crowns over and above the queen's offer; but as to entering
into competition with her--the devil!"
"You do like her, then?"
"As for that," said the old man, "yes, and no. The good woman is well
set-up, but--she is not living. You young men think you have done all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: glance that either they must beat back the foe or suffer their own men
to be shot down, the Mantineans turned right about and met the
assailant in a hand-to-hand encounter. Polytropus fell fighting on
that battlefield; and of the rest who took to flight, many would have
shared his fate, but for the opportune arrival of the Phliasian
cavalry, who swooped round to the conqueror's rear and checked him in
his pursuit.[14]
[13] Elymia, mentioned only by Xenophon, must have been on the
confines of the Mantinice and Orchomenus, probably at Levidhi.--
Leake, "Morea," iii. 75; "Peloponn." p. 229.
[14] See "Cyrop." VII. i. 36.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: and Louise. . . . On our arrival, we found, to our great vexation,
that Friday was the only day in the week in which visitors were not
admitted, and that we must content ourselves with seeing the grounds
and go back without a glimpse of its noble galleries of pictures.
Fortunately for us, Miss Murray had several friends among the
persons to whom the Queen has assigned apartments in the vast
edifice, and they willingly yielded their approbation of our
admission if she could possibly win over Mrs. Grundy, the
housekeeper. This name sounded rather inauspicious, but Mr.
Winthrop suggested that there might be a "Felix" to qualify it, and
so in this case it turned out. Mrs. Grundy asserted that such a
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