| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: to take it in; and keep it in your room, for mamma would not let me
read it, but you will lend it to me."
Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, who for the
last five months had given him so many proofs of filial affection,--
Monsieur de Watteville went in person to subscribe for a year to the
/Eastern Review/, and lent the four numbers already out to his
daughter. In the course of the night Rosalie devoured the tale--the
first she had ever read in her life--but she had only known life for
two months past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must
not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any kind as to
the greater or less merit of this composition from the pen of a
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: hoodwinking you. You pass for being blind, and all the time you have
laid your hand on causes, while other people are still puzzling over
effects. In short, you are a minister in petticoats, the only person
here capable of understanding me. It follows, then, that if I have any
sacrifice to ask from you, it is only to yourself I can turn for help
in persuading you.
"I am therefore going to explain to you, quite frankly, my former
plans, to which I still adhere. In order to recommend them to you, I
must show that they are connected with feelings of a very high order,
and I shall thus be obliged to enter into political questions of the
greatest importance to the kingdom, which might be wearisome to any
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: 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
22nd of January, 1793; and a kind of cult of him sprung up among them.
Their one hope was in him; they lived through him. They added special
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