| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: shorter according to the quality of the person admitted into the
king's presence. The ceremony made use of at the reception of a
stranger is somewhat unusual; as soon as he enters, all the
courtiers strike him with their cudgels till he goes back to the
door; the amity then subsisting between us did not secure me from
this uncouth reception, which they told me, upon my demanding the
reason of it, was to show those whom they treated with that they
were the bravest people in the world, and that all other nations
ought to bow down before them. I could not help reflecting on this
occasion how imprudently I had trusted my life in the hands of men
unacquainted with compassion of civility, but recollecting at the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: thought, or rather felt. Moreover, she could neither think nor
feel otherwise. She had been brought up in this idea that there
is in the world but one thing worthy of attention,--love. In
marrying, she had known something of this love, but very far from
everything that she had understood as promised her, everything
that she expected. How many disillusions! How much suffering!
And an unexpected torture,--the children! This torture had told
upon her, and then, thanks to the obliging doctor, she had
learned that it is possible to avoid having children. That had
made her glad. She had tried, and she was now revived for the
only thing that she knew,--for love. But love with a husband
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: the sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered.
As for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and
was another Don Juan in female attire, with this difference: she would
certainly not have invited the Commander to supper, and would have got
the better of any statue.
It is impossible to continue this tale without saying a word about the
Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de
Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess's confidences would
be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she
was about to play for her man of genius.
The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de
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