| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: domestic details, lamentations over the excessive dearness of
potatoes, or the length of the winter and the high price of block
fuel, together with forcible representations of amounts owing to the
baker, ending in an acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such
couples reveal their characters in picturesque language. As I
listened, I could make their lives mine, I felt their rags on my back,
I walked with their gaping shoes on my feet; their cravings, their
needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed into theirs.
It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot with them over the
foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers that made them call again and
again for payment.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: upon us as dew. In the region where the archangel paused, the air took
the hues of opal, and moved in eddies of which he was the centre. He
paused, looked at the Shade, and said:
" 'To-morrow.'
"Then he turned heavenwards once more, spread his wings, and clove
through space as a vessel cuts through the waves, hardly showing her
white sails to the exiles left on some deserted shore.
"The Shade uttered appalling cries, to which the damned responded from
the lowest circle, the deepest in the immensity of suffering, to the
more peaceful zone near the surface on which we were standing. This
worst torment of all had appealed to all the rest. The turmoil was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: can be no ill-will between us."
Paz left the room, fearing he might commit some great folly, and
feeling that wild ideas were getting the better of him. He went to
walk in the open air, lightly dressed in spite of the cold, but
without being able to cool the fire in his cheeks or on his brow.
"I thought you had a noble soul,"--the words still rang in his ears.
"A year ago," he said to himself, "she thought me a hero who could
fight the Russians single-handed!"
He thought of leaving the hotel Laginski, and taking service with the
spahis and getting killed in Africa, but the same great fear checked
him. "Without me," he thought, "what would become of them? they would
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