| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: keep anything, except, perhaps, a few baubles which might serve as
the beginning of an outfit for my enterprise. My dear Alphonse, I
will send you a proper power of attorney under which you can make
these sales. Send me all my weapons. Keep Briton for yourself;
nobody would pay the value of that noble beast, and I would rather
give him to you--like a mourning-ring bequeathed by a dying man to
his executor. Farry, Breilmann, & Co. built me a very comfortable
travelling-carriage, which they have not yet delivered; persuade
them to keep it and not ask for any payment on it. If they refuse,
do what you can in the matter, and avoid everything that might
seem dishonorable in me under my present circumstances. I owe the
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not
be found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a
preceptor. And in examining their actions and lives one cannot see
that they owed anything to fortune beyond opportunity, which brought
them the material to mould into the form which seemed best to them.
Without that opportunity their powers of mind would have been
extinguished, and without those powers the opportunity would have come
in vain.
It was necessary, therefore, to Moses that he should find the people
of Israel in Egypt enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians, in order
that they should be disposed to follow him so as to be delivered out
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: thousand francs' worth of bills bearing Maxime's signature (since
Maxime was his name), and filled a couple of letters to bursting with
judgments, appeals, orders of the court, distress-warrants,
application for stay of proceedings, and all the rest of it; to put it
briefly, they had bills for three thousand two hundred francs odd
centimes, for which they had given five hundred francs; the transfer
being made under private seal, with special power of attorney, to save
the expense of registration. Now it so happened at this juncture,
Maxime, being of ripe age, was seized with one of the fancies peculiar
to the man of fifty--"
"Antonia!" exclaimed La Palferine. "That Antonia whose fortune I made
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