| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: financed by him. His spies are everywhere."
"A naturalized German?" asked Tommy.
"On the contrary, I have every reason to believe he is an
Englishman. He was pro-German, as he would have been pro-Boer.
What he seeks to attain we do not know--probably supreme power
for himself, of a kind unique in history. We have no clue as to
his real personality. It is reported that even his own followers
are ignorant of it. Where we have come across his tracks, he has
always played a secondary part. Somebody else assumes the chief
role. But afterwards we always find that there has been some
nonentity, a servant or a clerk, who has remained in the
Secret Adversary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: death, and widen the impassable gulf which parts the two classes of
society. With the exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the
Beauffremont, the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others
who come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy
of Besancon dates no further back than a couple of centuries, the time
of the conquest by Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of the
/parlement/, and arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty
beyond all comparison, even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the
nobility of Besancon would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. As
to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are
never mentioned, no one thinks about them. The marriages in these
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: [37] Plat. "Rep." iii. 404 D, "refinements of Attic confectionery."
[38] {ek tes psukhes}, possibly "by a healthy appetite." Cf. "Symp."
iv. 41. The same sentiment "ex ore Antisthenis." See Joel, op.
cit. i. 382; Schanz, Plat. "Apol." p. 88, S. 26.
"Nay, bless my soul," exclaimed Meletus, "I know those whom you
persuaded to obey yourself rather than the fathers who begat
them."[39]
[39] Cf. "Mem." I. ii. 49.
"I admit it," Socrates replied, "in the case of education, for they
know that I have made the matter a study; and with regard to health a
man prefers to obey his doctor rather than his parents; in the public
The Apology |
