| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: Comtesse de Vaudremont across to me. I promise you that I will reveal
to her the mystery of the interesting unknown. You see, every man in
the room has reached as great a curiosity as your own. All eyes are
involuntarily turned towards the corner where my protegee has so
modestly placed herself; she is reaping all the homage the women
wished to deprive her of. Happy the man she chooses for her partner!"
She interrupted herself, fixing her eyes on Madame de Vaudremont with
one of those looks which plainly say, "We are talking of you."--Then
she added, "I imagine you would rather learn the stranger's name from
the lips of your handsome Countess than from mine."
There was such marked defiance in the Duchess' attitude that Madame de
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: "Yes, of course. That was the way you began, you know. You're
awfully inferior to him."
"Well, my dear, you're not inferior to anybody. You've got a
cheek! What's he in danger of?"
"Of being found out. He's in love with a lady--and it isn't right-
-and I've found him out."
"That'll be a look-out for ME!" Mr. Mudge joked. "You mean she has
a husband?"
"Never mind what she has! They're in awful danger, but his is the
worst, because he's in danger from her too."
"Like me from you--the woman I love? If he's in the same funk as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: everything, its honor included.
Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few
observations are necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions
concerning the whole character of the epoch that lies before us.
According to the view of the democrats, the issue, during the period of
the legislative National Assembly, was, the same as during the period of
the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle between republicans and
royalists; the movement itself was summed up by them in the catch-word
Reaction--night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl
out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the party of
Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that,
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