| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: to say but one word, 'Leon!' and I will plunge down into hell. I would
bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict
upon me!"
Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated
Leon to her with a fiendish laugh.
"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" she
cried. "Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will
you not save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair
unbound. "Can you save him?"
"I can do everything."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: awhile Mucius Scaevola gave them two civic cards; and often tidings
necessary for the priest's safety came to them in roundabout ways.
Warnings and advice reached them so opportunely that they could only
have been sent by some person in the possession of state secrets. And,
at a time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought
rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the wretched
garret. Still they fancied that Citizen Mucius Scaevola was only the
mysterious instrument of a kindness always ingenious, and no less
intelligent.
The noble ladies in the garret could no longer doubt that their
protector was the stranger of the expiatory mass on the night of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Wonderful, Prince of peace, the Mighty God,
Count the more base idolater of the two;
Crueller: as not passing thro' the fire
Bodies, but souls--thy children's--thro' the smoke,
The blight of low desires--darkening thine own
To thine own likeness; or if one of these,
Thy better born unhappily from thee,
Should, as by miracle, grow straight and fair--
Friends, I was bid to speak of such a one
By those who most have cause to sorrow for her--
Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
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