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Some History of No-Code & the Current No-Code Attitude Pretty much since the beginning of computer science, coders have tried to invent ways to code less. If you haven’t had the conversation with your fellow developers about how long until we have an AI system spit out a no-code UI integrated with some sort of low-code automation system, then you probably haven’t found yourself on the bad end of a 24-hour coding binge on the project that just can’t be saved. 🤣 While the explosion of Zapier and IFTTT feels like a watershed moment in the history of no-code, its roots are, of course, much deeper. For myself, I was first mind-blown on a project where we made use of Together/J from TogetherSoft. was, at first impression, a pretty decent UML modeling tool. Plenty of other modeling tools existed, some might have even been better. But Together’s killer feature was a really good round-trip engineering engine that let you go from diagram to code and from code to diagram - and it was pretty darn good. Together But alas, there was so much more to writing good code than what Together could generate - at least without making your diagrams ugly. There wasn’t a good way for Together to know when catching and handling an exception was a good idea. So, in the end, it was great to lay down some boilerplate code from a diagram that you would later help grow up into real code. Arpit Choudhury, in his , places the beginning of the movement at the feet of WordPress. history of no-code Server-Side No-Code, or automation and orchestration, has a fuzzier past because it’s hard to say when it really began. Some BPM tools had graphical designers and I’m thus far unsuccessful trying to locate the first. For my part, the first automation tool that slapped me in the face as to what the future might hold was Yahoo! Pipes. Pipes was a visual tool for mashing up internet data and creating an aggregated output. Within a few years, the likes of IFTTT and Zapier were formed and shortly made major waves. Why Engineering Shouldn’t Hate (the idea of) No-Code Focus on the fun parts As an engineer, I’d rather focus on what makes my company great. If I can offload what isn’t core to my business that’s a win for me.
More than just the tedious tasks, even some very important, very impactful software is still not part of the core business - it should be analyzed for opportunity cost. As a leader of engineers, I’m constantly watching for what I want my engineers to actually write and what they might be able to buy. Of course, there are caveats here, but more on those later. Much easier to document/understand Our industry spends millions of dollars on documentation around APIs. To make APIs easier, we wrap them with SDKs. Then we spend a few more millions of dollars documenting, packaging and maintaining the SDKs. And still, we find sites like StackOverflow filled with Q&A about working with services. As a consumer of no-code tools, they allow me to consume an API without any of the startup costs - I only have to learn the actions available and what I want to pass into each parameter. As the producer of an API, integration with no-code tools allows me to better express how my API was intended to be used. Put these together and it seems like the software development world should love no-code for integrated SaaS type web services. Turn over a bit of control 😬 In contrast to my first point, there are also many tedious tasks that go into running a business. We’re not talking mission-critical, must-be bullet-proof, real-time processing code - we’re talking about the registration form for the preview webinar of the upcoming release. These are the tasks we love to avoid. No-code offers the promise of actually allowing us to turn some of the control over to those who deserve to control it. Have a CEO that likes to change the landing page every third day? (I don’t, I’m just thinking you might) No-code CMS tools might save you some headaches. Not settled on how your sales funnel will work exactly? Use an automation tool to let you easily change it. Why Engineering Should Hate (the current state of) No-Code No-code has really come a long way in the last 7-8 years, led by founders seeking to find product/market fit quickly and nimbly. Dozens of tools have emerged helping to fill this specific gap. Unfortunately, the current view by most IT professionals is that no-code tools provide stop-gaps to a “real engineered solution” - often, the no-code solution is cataloged as technical debt to someday be remediated. Unfortunately, this isn’t wrong thinking. Given the current state of no-code tooling, it’s impossible to engineer a solid platform. Here are a few places I think the industry is lacking: Loss of flexibility One reason engineers like to have good old-fashioned code available is that we can do almost anything our minds can conceive. We can’t imagine a programming language without branch logic, looping and other flow control tools. As engineers, we prefer to organize our logic in manageable chunks to maximize reuse and increase maintainability. And we’re certainly anxious about any black boxes that don’t let us glimpse what’s really happening and offer no easy path to exit. Depending on your selection of no-code tools, you might get some of these needs met, but you won’t find anything that gives similar flexibility to code. No real error handling Also stemming from our natural desire for control, no engineer is going to feel comfortable without the ability to handle errors gracefully and recover from issues with a clear plan. Security! One major area that no-code tools (and, to be fair, many API systems) need to spend more time is the security aspects. This isn’t a simple matter of good authentication practices. Because no-code tools often act as a middleware orchestrating across many systems, the attack surface is large and prize is huge. No-code tools require connections to all the SaaS tools you require to serve your customers. Because the system you use to build your app is often the same system running the deployed code for your users, the attack pathway can theoretically be extended to include credentials across all your connections. Executing dynamic code comes with its own set of concerns and if your no-code tool is multi-tenant, these risks are extended across all fellow clients of the platform. If you plan to use the app integrations at a low level (something like Kafka or database access) and you aren’t deploying on-premises, exposing your internal tooling on the internet becomes a huge risk. I’m not an infosec professional, but I rely on their expertise and have learned much in my career. If you are building with no-code and especially if you will have customer or private data - please spend some time with an infosec consultant. Sending your customers an apology note for a security breach in the early days of your company can be devastating. Monitoring & Operations Hand-in-glove with some earlier points, No-Code tools need better means to ensure things are functioning properly. It’s never long before a small automation takes on a mission-critical role. Or, if you are building a full customer UI using no-code, then responding to outages from your no-code platform is a real thing. The double-edged sword to growth is that you have clearly found the right product fit but you need the tools and staff to support everything with more and more clients. This may be one of the most sleepless times for technical founders. Every day you wake up hoping everything is still up and running while you are shoring up the foundations. The lack of ability to monitor and respond to no-code issues is a major flaw. The hole is big enough that startups are popping up to fill this gap for technical operations teams that need to manage no-code deployments. The Path Forward At WhenThen we believe in the power of no-code and the future it promises for all means of software development. But for all that promise, it’s time for no-code to grow up into the tool we know it can be. Three things I’d like to see out of no-code over the next year: Security at the Start When evaluating a platform or tool to build with, look for one with a proven track record from security and operations-minded teams. Not just a tool that hasn’t had a breach yet - look at the security and data privacy teams for real roots in understanding what it means to keep your data secure. And beyond data security - look for tools that aren’t trying to be a black box but aim to give you the tools you need to sleep at night and dream about the future. It’s Time for Standards The last decade or so can rightfully be called the Age of APIs. SaaS as we know it would not be nearly as useful nor as vibrant if not for the attention given to open APIs and standardized connectivity. OAuth, Swagger (OpenAPI), OpenID and many other standards around API enablement helped usher in a world in which developers can generate connectivity code and think about APIs, in the same manner, they would a local library. Make no bones about it, it was the standards and the adoption of the standards that made it all possible and the same is true for the next phase of API enablement - no-code and automation. We need a few standards that will help build consensus and adoption. We need a layer on top of the API definition that describes the events (triggers) and actions (operations) a service supports. We need to offer the next generation of API documentation that demonstrates the flow and usage of the API in question. A better way for developers to understand how a service is meant to be used right inside the tools we’re using to call it. On-Ramps and Off-Ramps The final standard I’d like to see is one of portability. We need a way to describe automation logic in a portable means. A way to bring logic into my tools of choice and eject my way out when the time calls. Summary Folks building no-code tools right now must feel like they are sitting on the cone of a rocket ship; I know I do. The breadth of tools and how quickly the landscape is changing only makes me more bullish that no-code/low-code/automation is the future. If we, as an industry, can start making some important changes, we can avoid many of the troubles paradigm-changing trends have faced.

It’s Time for No-Code to Grow-up

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Theodore Roosevelt once said “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” When making important decisions with possible life altering effects, the uncertainty of the outcome and the fear of stepping into the unknown keeps us locked in an unproductive cycle where the more data we collect and the more we analyze it, the more we overthink our decision. Our imagination runs wild—we assume the worst possible scenario and consider it as our best case. We create stories in our mind and reject all good options with the possibility of a better option out there. *For example: decision to relocate, quitting your job to start a business, switching careers, rolling out a major shift in a company’s strategy etc.* Call it fear, perfectionism, laziness or lack of focus, spending all your time analyzing while failing to act leads to analysis paralysis. Desire to make the perfect decision turns into indecision. You struggle to reach a conclusion because you keep chasing certainty which does not exist—no one can know with surety if a particular decision is the best or will lead to the desired result. Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It's important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action. — Robert Herjavec You can never make perfect decisions, but you can certainly make more confident decisions by using these 4 practices: Clearly define the outcome you wish to achieve When you try to make a decision where the problem statement is vague or the outcome you wish to achieve is unclear, don’t complain if you spend hours looking at the data but fail to reach a conclusion. You may attribute your inability to make a decision to the complexity of the problem, lack of sufficient inputs, or not having enough data points, but those things are just excuses to avoid facing the truth—you don’t know what it is that you want. Bringing clarity to the problem and defining the success criteria is the first half of the challenge. It’s the stepping stone to a successful decision. Without it, any effort you put into the second half is useless. To do this, ask yourself these questions: What problem do I wish to solve? How do I know if I am addressing the right problem? What outcome do I wish to achieve? What do I most care about? How would I know if I have achieved the outcome? What’s my success criteria? Analysis paralysis also happens when your success criteria is impossible to meet—you expect everything on your list with a 100% guarantee and are unwilling to compromise on anything. Good success criteria is not a wish list. It involves identifying one most crucial thing you care about—your North Star. Knowing your North Star simplifies the decision process—just find an option that looks promising and has a good probability of achieving it. Defining the problem statement clearly and the outcomes you wish to achieve will help you stay focused and ease out the decision making process. Become comfortable with good enough When making a decision, it’s good to consider different options, alternative viewpoints and multiple sources. They prevent your biases, personal beliefs or other circumstantial constraints from limiting your decision and hence the outcome you achieve. But while having options is good, having a large number of options to choose from can also be overwhelming. The more choices you have, the harder it is to make a decision. The abundance of information and too many choices can lead to indecisiveness. You may end up spending a lot of time researching solutions, fixate on the shortcoming of each one and continue investing time and energy with the hope to find the best option. But instead of making a decision and moving on, choice overload will make you feel more and more unsure. Choice overload causes us to delay decisions because too many options drain our cognitive systems making us more prone to putting off the decision entirely. also shows that more options can lead to decreased satisfaction and lower confidence in our choice making it more likely that we regret our decisions later. Research Psychologist Barry Schwartz says that there are 2 types of people—maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers strive to make a choice that will give them the maximum benefit. They seek and accept only the best. They can’t choose unless they have deeply examined every option which leads to non stop information seeking and social comparison. Satisficers on the other hand use a more modest criteria and choose an option that passes the threshold of acceptability. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. — Barry Schwartz In order to avoid analysis paralysis, be a satisficer. To do this: Set boundaries for your research. Don’t leave it open ended—limit the information to gather, inputs to consider and set time limits. Don’t leave the decision date unassigned. Set a date considering the scope and complexity of the problem to create a sense of urgency. List the pros and cons of each choice and just pick the one that seems to stand out in that moment. Once you have made a decision, don’t let your mind consider the possibility of a better one. Stop second guessing and get down to putting your decision into action. Being comfortable with good enough isn’t about accepting mediocrity. It still requires making a conscious, thoughtful choice but to do so within boundaries and putting your time and energy into taking action instead of lamenting about the possibility of a better option out there. Combine data with intuition When analysis paralysis hits, you become unwilling to commit. You feel stuck because you want to be rational in your choice, and that’s fair. But the problem is not rational thinking, it’s not knowing when rationality turns into an excuse to over-analyze and put off decision making. Rational approach involves deliberate thinking—invoking the slow part of our brain to weigh in different options, comparing trade offs and then making a choice. Intuitive thinking involves emotions, experience and knowledge. Intuitive thinking is neither illogical or irrational, it’s intelligence that you have developed over a lifetime. Your brain is a pattern matching machine and intuitive thinking relies on matching your current situation to your past patterns to make a decision. That’s why intuition can be sometimes right and sometimes flawed. Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, says that intuition works under 3 conditions: There has to be some regularity for you to spot trends or patterns. Intuition can’t be developed or applied to complex systems that are prone to change quickly. You must have a lot of experience and practice in the area for you to trust your gut. Without it, if you use your intuition and all goes well, it’s your luck, not your intuition that got you the results. You get immediate and concrete feedback on whether you got it right or wrong. If any of these things are not true, it’s best to think through the problem more rationally. Most people either use analytic or intuitive thinking to make a decision because they view them as opposite strategies where one cannot exist with the other. Research indicates otherwise—we make best decisions by combining analytic and intuitive thinking and not using them alone. A purely intuitive strategy relying only on pattern matching would be too risky because sometimes the pattern matching generates flawed options. A completely deliberative and analytic strategy would be too slow. — Gary Klein When you’re stuck in analysis paralysis, instead of relying only on data, factor your past knowledge and experience into the decision process—use the rational part of your brain to consider different choices and combine it with your intuition to make the final decision. Choose right time of the day to make the decision A series of small decisions scattered throughout our day may appear harmless as they demand only a small fraction of our mental energy, but as the day goes on and we continue to expend from our reserved pool of energy, our mental capacity to make decisions starts depleting. Unlike physical fatigue which we can feel and instantly express, the mental fatigue that comes after making multiple decisions is not visible to us. Decision fatigue as psychologists like to call it leads to poor quality of decision making—we show reluctance to make trade-offs, fall back to easy choices and may even find it difficult to exercise self-control after making a series of decisions. If your work requires you to make hard decisions all day long, at some point you’re going to be depleted and start looking for ways to conserve energy. You’ll look for excuses to avoid or postpone decisions. You’ll look for the easiest and safest option, which often is to stick with the status quo - Roy Baumeister Making a good decision requires bringing knowledge from several domains, stitching distinct ideas together, maintaining the right balance of exploring breadth and depth across these ideas, making new connections and then zeroing in on a few candidates that look promising. When your mental machinery is tired, it’s hard to separate noise from signal. It leads to overthinking—tendency to think too much and move back and forth on ideas without the ability to give them a specific direction. Decision fatigue may cause you to obsess about the problems that don’t even exist, draw biased conclusions and be stuck with analysis paralysis with the possibility that there might be something better out there. It can cause you to chase a perfect solution instead of making the best decision under the given circumstances. To avoid analysis paralysis for important decisions, align those decisions with the time of the day when your mental capacity to process information is at its peak. By matching the mental demands of the decision with your energy levels, you’re less likely to be stuck in an overthinking cycle. Ask yourself these questions before deciding: Is it the best time of the day to make this decision? Do I feel at my best when making this decision? Does everything around me feel more intense than normal? Schedule a slot on the calendar for the time of the day when you’ll be at your best to make the decision. Once it shows up, align your brain with your goal by telling it to make the decision without further delay. It may seem like a silly thing to do at first, but by actually repeating it, you can train your brain to make the decision and not overthink it. Ending with this thought from Terry Goodkind that gets me out of paralysis by analysis every single time: “Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.” Stop thinking and act now. Summary Important decisions shouldn’t be postponed, but that is exactly what we do. Desire to make the perfect decision turns into indecision as analysis paralysis prevents us from taking action and moving forward. Not clearly defining the problem statement or what you hope to achieve is one of the biggest reasons behind analysis paralysis. When you’re struggling to make a decision, ensure problem clarity and well-defined success criteria. Instead of being a maximizer who seeks only the best, be a satisficer—identify an option that’s good enough and stop worrying about the rest. Analysis paralysis hits us when we place too much focus on rational thinking while ignoring our intuition. Combining the two together is a great strategy to break the overthinking cycle and take positive action. Our tired mind under the effect of decision fatigue turns unwilling to commit. To counter its effect, make decisions during the time of the day when your mental energy is at its peak. This story was previously published Follow me on or here for more stories. here. LinkedIn

How to Stop Analysis Paralysis and Make More Confident Decisions

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Cucumber-js and BDD are not new. Still, many developers are fairly unfamiliar with them; the two together can be very powerful tools for both non-tech people and developers. What Is BDD? BDD is short for Business-Driven-Development; it's a way to close the gap between business people and technical people. Basically, BDD has evolved from TDD; there's a high chance that you might even be doing BDD without knowing it, as sometimes the lines between them aren't clear. So what's the difference between them, both are ? Well, the difference is that we use the language of our end-users, i.e., the business or domain language such as , to capture a story in an executable format. For example, automated tests right Given-When-Then GIVEN User is on Wordpress Registration Page.
WHEN he enters all the required information.
THEN his account is created. The “given” part is where we declare preconditions. In our example above, we had a user. Next, the “when” part contains the action you want to test. And finally, you verify the outcome in the “then” part. Now, If you have more than one or you require more information than this, you can add them with . For example, AND GIVEN User is on Wordpress Registration Page.
WHEN he enters all the required information.
AND he hits ‘create account’
THEN his account is created.
AND his confirmation email is sent. Introducing Cucumber Cucumber-js is . The tests are written in the Gherkin language, which is human-readable and is stored in feature files that have the feature extension. This allows your tests to be a point of communication and collaboration with business people and can even serve as documentation that is automatically up-to-date. a test framework that supports BDD A test in the Gherkin language is called a scenario. And scenarios are organized into features. Feature: Automatic discounts for premium customers
    Premium customers should automatically get a
    discount of 25% on purchases over $500.

    Scenario: Purchase over $700
        Given a premium customer
        And an order containing
            | item   | amount | price |
            | pencil | 100    | 2     |
            | paper  | 10     | 35    |
        When the customer checks out
        Then the total price should be 412.5 In the above example, there are many , and every keyword has its own meaning and purpose. keywords Let’s explain each keyword with respect to the above example. : The feature file starts with the keyword Feature**.** Under feature, you can mention the feature name that is to be tested, as seen above. Feature Keyword : Each scenario must start with the keyword Scenario**,** followed by the scenario name. And under each feature file, there can be more than one scenario. Scenario Keyword : Given keyword is used when we have to give some pre-condition in our test case. Given Keyword : When the keyword is used to perform some action. When Keyword : It is used to two statements with the logical condition between any two statements. It can be used in combination with , and statements. And Keyword connect AND GIVEN WHEN, THEN : Then Keyword is used for the final outcome or for validation. Then Keyword Other than these, there are two more keywords, : This keyword is used to represent negative assertions in addition to the previous statement. But Keyword : Steps kept under Background would be run before every test case. Background Keyword Although, Initially, Cucumber was created for ' ' as a support for BDD framework for testing, Cucumber-js has evolved to support a variety of different programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, PHP, Net, Python, Perl, etc... Ruby Language RSpec Writing simple BDD test with Cucumber-js We will create a few tests to see how cucumber works, for this we will first define our scenario and feature before starting to write our code. Let's get started!! First, let's create our work directory and create our file: - package*.json mkdir bdd & cd bdd
npm init -y Now, it's time to install our dependencies. npm i chai @cucumber/cucumber @cucumber/cucumber-expressions cucumber-html-reporter Let's move towards writing the tests and setting up folder structures for cucumber-js; this is how the folder structure should look like: - ├── Features
│   ├── Support
│   │   ├── steps.js
│   │   ├── world.js
│   ├── simple_math.feature
├── utils
│   ├── report.js
├── cucumber.js
├── node_modules
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
└── .gitignore Create a folder structure similar to the above before moving forward. Once we have our folder structure ready, let's start with file: - steps.js const { Given, When, Then } = require("@cucumber/cucumber");
const { expect } = require("chai");

Given("a variable set to {int}", function(number) {
  this.setTo(number);
});

When("I increment the variable by {int}", function(number) {
  this.incrementBy(number);
});

Then("the variable should contain {int}", function(number) {
  expect(this.variable).to.eql(number);
}); In Cucumber-js, “ ” is an isolated scope for each scenario. That means all the steps, hooks, etc., for a scenario are a part of a world, and this data can be accessed within the world anytime. Let's define our file world world.js const { setWorldConstructor } = require("@cucumber/cucumber");

class CustomWorld {
  constructor() {
    this.variable = 0;
  }
  setTo(number) {
    this.variable = number;
  }
  incrementBy(number) {
    this.variable += number;
  }
}
setWorldConstructor(CustomWorld); Finally, we have both steps and world ready. Now it's time to create our file. .feature Feature: Simple maths
  In order to do maths
  As a developer
  I want to increment variables

  Scenario: easy maths
    Given a variable set to 1
    When I increment the variable by 1
    Then the variable should contain 2

  Scenario Outline: much more complex stuff
    Given a variable set to <var>
    When I increment the variable by <increment>
    Then the variable should contain <result>
    Examples:
      | var | increment | result |
      | 100 |         5 |    105 |
      |  99 |      1234 |   1333 |
      |  12 |         5 |     17 | Above, we have defined our feature, and, in correspondence, created two different scenarios. Let's run to see if the test pass/fail : npx cucumber-js The output we get would be similar to below: Test Report File Now, to make it more understandable, let's add functionality to create the test report for each run. In file, we will add: - cucumber.js var _default = [
    '--format usage:reports/usage.txt',
    '--format json:reports/cucumber_report.json',
    '--format html:reports/cucumber_report.html'
  ].join(' ')
  
  module.exports = {
    default: _default,
  } This will create a JSON and HTML report to visualize and append in the same files each time we run our tests. Now, let's define what will be there in the report file. In , we will add a few lines to provide some more ideas about test environments in the form of metadata. report.js var reporter = require('cucumber-html-reporter');

var options = {
        theme: 'bootstrap',
        jsonFile: 'reports/cucumber_report.json',
        output: 'reports/cucumber_report.html',
        reportSuiteAsScenarios: true,
        scenarioTimestamp: true,
        launchReport: true,
        metadata: {
            "App Version":"0.3.2",
            "Test Environment": "STAGING",
            "Browser": "Edge  54.0.2840.98",
            "Platform": "MacOS",
            "Parallel": "Scenarios",
            "Executed": "Remote"
        }
    };

reporter.generate(options); Now run your tests once again, and you can see that under folder there are two files with name. Open the to see your test report HTML file would look something like below: - reports/ cucumber_report.* HTML Conclusion Cucumber-js focuses mainly on making the collaboration between tech people and business people easy. But it doesn’t eliminate the coding part and still has a lot of code involved. When dealing with the main thing we have to keep in mind is how to properly use keywords GIVEN, WHEN, and THEN. behavior-driven automation, there are a lot of rules that you have to use as a guide; The testing industry has gone to the next step now with codeless testing integrated with AI and smart logic. Frameworks like allow you to create tests without using a single line of code using record and playback testing. But if you still need to use code for some reason, it also allows you to integrate your code into the test project. Keploy The bottom line is that you have three options to choose from for testing: Traditional testing. Code testing that’s easy for business people to understand. Codeless, AI-powered testing. What suits you best depends on your use case. But it’s important to know about all these options to decide what suits you best. So good luck exploring! Also published . here

BDD with Cucumber-js: Bridging the Gap between Developers and Business

I started to summarize a dozen books by hand and found it was going to take me weeks for each summary. Then I remembered about this AI revolution happening and decided I was long past due to jump into these waters. . When I began exploring the use of large language models (LLM) for summarizing large texts, I found no clear direction on how to do so Some pages give example prompts to give GPT4 with the idea that it will magically know the contents of whatever book you want summarized. (NOT) Some people suggested i need to find a model with a large context that can process my whole text in one go. (Not Yet) Some open source tools are available that allow you to upload documents to a database and answer questions based on the contents of that database. (Getting Closer) Others have suggested that you must first divide the book into sections and feed them into the LLM for summarization one at a time. (Now we’re talking) Beyond that determination, there are numerous variables which must be accounted for when implementing a given LLM. I quickly realized, despite any recommendations or model rankings available, I was getting different results than what others have. Whether its my use-case, the model format, quantization, compression, prompt styles, or what? I don’t know. All I know is, do your own model rankings under your own working conditions. Don’t just believe some chart you read online. This guide provides some specifics into my process of determination and testing out the details of above mentioned variables. . Find the complete ranking data, walkthrough, and resulting summaries on GitHub Background Key Terms Some of these terms are used in different ways, depending on the context (no pun intended). : (AKA Model) A type of Artificial Intelligence that has  been trained upon massive datasets to understand and generate human language. Large Language Model (LLM) : OpenAI’s GPT3.5 and GPT4 which have taken the world by storm. (In our case we are choosing among open source and\or freely downloadable models found on .) Example Hugging Face : A technique, , of storing documents in a database that the LLM searches among to find an answer for a given user query (Document Q/A). Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) developed by Meta AI (AKA Prompt, or Context) is the query provided by the user. User Instructions: Example: “Summarize the following text : ” { text } Special instructions given before the user prompt, that helps shape the personality of your assistant. System Prompt: Example: “You are a helpful AI Assistant.” User instructions, and possibly a system prompt, and possibly previous rounds of question\answer pairs. (Previous Q/A pairs are also referred to simply as context). Context: : These are special character combinations that a LLM is trained with to recognize the difference between user instructions, system prompt and context from previous questions. Prompt Style Example: <s>[INST] {systemPrompt} [/INST] [INST] {previousQuestion} [/INST] {answer} </s> [INST] {userInstructions} [/INST] Indicates the number of parameters in a given model (higher is generally better). Parameters are the internal variables that the model learns during training and are used to make predictions. For my purposes, 7B models are likely to fit on a my GPU with 12GB VRAM. 7B: This is a specific format for LLM designed for consumer hardware (CPU/GPU). Whatever model you are interested in, for use in PrivateGPT, you must find its GGUF version (commonly made by ). GGUF: TheBloke When browsing the files of a GGUF repository you will see different versions of the same model. A higher number means less compressed, and better quality. The M in K_M means “Medium” and the S in K_S means “Small”. Q2-Q8 0, K_M or K_S: This is the memory capacity of your GPU. To load it completely to GPU, you will want a model smaller size than your available VRAM. VRAM: This is the metric LLM weighs language with. Each token consists of roughly 4 characters. Tokens: What is PrivateGPT? PrivateGPT (pgpt) is an that provides a user-interface and programmable API enabling users to use LLM with own hardware, at home. It allows you to upload documents to your own local database for RAG supported Document Q/A. open source project : PrivateGPT Documentation - Overview PrivateGPT provides an containing all the building blocks required to build . The API follows and extends OpenAI API standard, and supports both normal and streaming responses. That means that, if you can use OpenAI API in one of your tools, you can use your own PrivateGPT API instead, with no code changes, if you are running privateGPT in mode. API private, context-aware AI applications and for free local Overview I began by asking questions to book chapters, using the UI\RAG. PrivateGPT Then tried pre-selecting chunks of text for summarization. This inspired Round 1 rankings: Q/A vs Summarization. Next I wanted to find which models would do the best with this task, which led to Round 2 rankings, where was the clear winner. Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 Then I wanted to get the best results from this model by ranking prompt styles, and writing code to get the exact prompt style expected. After that, of course, I had to test out various system prompts to see which would perform the best. Next, I tried a few, user prompts, to determine what is the exact best prompt to generate summaries that require the least post-processing, by me. Only once each model has been targeted to its most ideal conditions can they be properly ranked against each-other. Rankings When i began testing various LLM variants, came as part of PrivateGPT's default setup (made to run on your CPU). Here, I've preferred the Q8_0 variants. mistral-7b-instruct-v0.1.Q4_K_M.gguf While I've tried 50+ different Q8 GGUF for this same task, and haven’t found any better than . Mistral-7B-Instruct 0.2 Round 1 - Q/A vs Summary I quickly discovered when doing Q/A is that I get much better results when uploading smaller chunks of data into the database, and starting with a clean slate each time. So I began splitting PDF into chapters for Q/A purposes. For my first analysis I tested out 5 different LLM for the following tasks: Asking the same 30 questions to a 70 page book chapter. Summarizing that same 70 page book chapter, divided into 30 chunks. Question / Answer Ranking - My favorite, during these tests, but when actually editing the summaries I decided it was too verbose. Hermes Trismegistus Mistral 7b - Became my favorite of models tested in this round. SynthIA 7B V2 - Not as good as I’d like. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.1 Alot of filler and took the longest amount of time of them all. It scored a bit higher than mistral on quality\usefulness, but the amount of filler just made it less enjoyable to read. CollectiveCognition v1.1 Mistral 7b the answers were too short, and made its BS stand out a little more. A good model, but not for detailed book summaries. KAI 7b Instruct Shown, for each model Number of seconds required to generate the answer Sum of Subjective Usefulness\Quality Ratings How many characters were generated? Sum of context context chunks found in target range. Number of qualities listed below found in text generated: Filler (Extra words with less value) Short (Too short, not enough to work with.) BS (Not from this book and not helpful.) Good BS (Not from the targeted section but valid.) Model Rating Search Accuracy Characters Seconds BS Filler Short Good BS hermes-trismegistus-mistral-7b 68 56 62141 298 3 4 0 6 synthia-7b-v2.0 63 59 28087 188 1 7 7 0 mistral-7b-instruct-v0.1 51 56 21131 144 3 0 17 1 collectivecognition-v1.1-mistral-7b 56 57 59453 377 3 10 0 0 kai-7b-instruct 44 56 21480 117 5 0 18 0 Summary Ranking For this first round I split the chapter contents in to sections with a range of 900-14000 characters each (or 225-3500 tokens). NOTE: Despite the numerous large context models being released, for now, I still believe smaller context results in better summaries. I don’t prefer any more than 2750 tokens (11000 characters) per summarization task. - Still in the lead. It's verbose, with some filler. I can use these results. Hermes Trismegistus Mistral 7b - Pretty good, but too concise. Many of the answers were perfect, but 7 were too short\incomplete for use. SynthIA 7B - Just too short. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.1 - Just too short. KAI 7b Instruct - Lots of garbage. Some of the summaries were super detailed and perfect, but over half of the responses were a set of questions based on the text, not a summary. CollectiveCognition v1.1 Mistral 7b Not surprisingly, summaries performed much better than Q/A, since had a precisely targeted context. Name Score Characters Generated % Diff from OG Seconds to Generate Short Garbage BS Fill Questions Detailed hermes-trismegistus-mistral-7b 74 45870 -61 274 0 1 1 3 0 0 synthia-7b-v2.0 60 26849 -77 171 7 1 0 0 0 1 mistral-7b-instruct-v0.1 58 25797 -78 174 7 2 0 0 0 0 kai-7b-instruct 59 25057 -79 168 5 1 0 0 0 0 collectivecognition-v1.1-mistral-7b 31 29509 -75 214 0 1 1 2 17 8 Find the full data and rankings on or on GitHub: , . Google Docs QA Scores Summary Rankings Round 2: Summarization - Model Ranking Again, I prefer Q8 versions of 7B models. Finding that had been released was worth a new round of testing. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 I also decided to test the prompt style. PrivateGPT didn’t come packaged with the Mistral prompt, so I tried both of the defaults (llama2 and llama-index). - This model had become my favorite, so I used it as a benchmark. SynthIA-7B-v2.0-GGUF (Llama-index Prompt) Star of the show here, quite impressive. Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 (Llama2 Prompt) Still good, but not good as using llama-index prompt Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 as - Another by the same creator as Synthia v2. Good, but not good. Tess-7B-v1.4 as - worked ok, but slowly, with llama-index prompt. Just bad with llama2 prompt. (Should test again with Llama2 "Instruct Only" style) Llama-2-7B-32K-Instruct-GGUF Summary Ranking Only summaries, Q/A is just less efficient for book summarization. Model % Difference Score Comment Synthia 7b V2 -64.43790093 28 Good Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 (Default Prompt) -60.81878508 33 VGood Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 (Llama2 Prompt) -64.5871483 28 Good Tess 7b v1.4 -62.12938978 29 Less Structured Llama 2 7b 32k Instruct (Default) -61.39890553 27 Less Structured. Slow Find the full data and rankings on or on . Google Docs GitHub Round 3: Prompt Style In the previous round, I noticed was performing much better with default prompt than llama2. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 Well, actually, the mistral prompt is quite similar to llama2, but not exactly the same. llama_index (default) system: {{systemPrompt}}
user: {{userInstructions}}
assistant: {{assistantResponse}} llama2: <s> [INST] <<SYS>>
 {{systemPrompt}}
<</SYS>>

 {{userInstructions}} [/INST] mistral: <s>[INST] {{systemPrompt}} [/INST]</s>[INST] {{userInstructions}} [/INST] with the , then prompt styles. Next I went to work . I began testing output default llama2 coding the mistral template The results of that ranking gave me confidence that I coded correctly. Prompt Style % Difference Score Note Mistral -50% 51 Perfect! Default (llama-index) -42% 43 Bad headings Llama2 -47% 48 No Structure Find the full data and rankings on or on . Google Docs GitHub Round 4: System Prompts Once I got the prompt style dialed in, I tried a few different system prompts, and was surprised by the result! Name System Prompt Change Score Comment None -49.8 51 Perfect Default Prompt You are a helpful, respectful and honest assistant. \nAlways answer as helpfully as possible and follow ALL given instructions. \nDo not speculate or make up information. \nDo not reference any given instructions or context." -58.5 39 Less Nice MyPrompt1 "You are Loved. Act as an expert on summarization, outlining and structuring. \nYour style of writing should be informative and logical." -54.4 44 Less Nice Simple "You are a helpful AI assistant. Don't include any user instructions, or system context, as part of your output." -52.5 42 Less Nice In the end, I find that works best for my summaries without any system prompt. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 Maybe would have different results for a different task, or maybe better prompting, but this works good so I'm not messing with it. Find the full data and rankings on or on . Google Docs GitHub Round 5: User Prompt What I already began to suspect is that I’m getting better results with less words in the prompt. Since I found the best system prompt, for , I also tested which user prompt suits it best. Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 Prompt vs OG score note Propmt0 Write concise, yet comprehensive, notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. Focus on essential knowledge from this text without adding any external information. 43% 11 Prompt1 Write concise, yet comprehensive, notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. Focus on essential knowledge from this text without adding any external information. 46% 11 Extra Notes Prompt2 Write comprehensive notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. 58% 15 Prompt3 Create concise bullet-point notes summarizing the important parts of the following text. Use nested bullet points, with headings terms and key concepts in bold, including whitespace to ensure readability. Avoid Repetition. 43% 10 Prompt4 Write concise notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. 41% 14 Prompt5 Create comprehensive, but concise, notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. 52% 14 Extra Notes Find the full data and rankings on or on . Google Docs GitHub Perhaps with more powerful hardware that can support 11b or 30b models I would get better results with more descriptive prompting. Even with Mistral 7b Instruct v0.2 I’m still open to trying some creative instructions, but for now I’m just happy to refine my existing process. Prompt2: Wins! Write comprehensive notes summarizing the following text. Use nested bullet points: with headings, terms, and key concepts in bold. In this case, comprehensive performs better than "concise", or even than "comprehensive, but concise". However, I do caution that this will depend on your use-case. What I'm looking for is a highly condensed and readable notes covering the important knowledge. Essentially, if I didn't read the original, I should still know what information it conveys, if not every specific detail. Even if I did read the original, I’m not going to remember the majority, later on. These notes are a quick reference to the main topics. Result Using knowledge gained from these tests, I summarized my first complete book, 539 pages in 5-6 hours!!! Incredible! Instead of spending weeks per summary, I completed my first 9 book summaries in only 10 days. Plagiarism You can see the results from below for each of the texts published, here. CopyLeaks Especially considering that this is not for profit, but for educational purposes, I believe these numbers are acceptable. Book Models Character Difference Identical Minor changes Paraphrased Total Matched Eastern Body Western Mind Synthia 7Bv2 -75% 3.5% 1.1% 0.8% 5.4% Healing Power Vagus Nerve Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2; SynthIA-7B-v2.0 -81% 1.2% 0.8% 2.5% 4.5% Ayurveda and the Mind Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2; SynthIA-7B-v2.0 -77% 0.5% 0.3% 1.2% 2% Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -75% 2% A Secure Base Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -84% 0.3% 0.1% 0.3% 0.7% The Body Keeps the Score Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -74% 0.1% 0.2% 0.3% 0.5% Complete Book of Chakras Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -70% 0.3% 0.3% 0.4% 1.1% 50 Years of Attachment Theory Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -70% 1.1% 0.4% 2.1% 3.7% Attachment Disturbances in Adults Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -62% 1.1% 1.2% 0.7% 3.1% Psychology Major's Companion Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -62% 1.3% 1.2% 0.4% 2.9% Psychology in Your Life Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2 -74% 0.6% 0.4% 0.5% 1.6% Completed Book Summaries In parenthesis is the page count of the original. Instead of spending weeks per summary, I completed my first 9 book summaries in only 10 days. Anodea Judith (436 pages) Eastern Body Western Mind Stanley Rosenberg (335 Pages) Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve Dr. David Frawley (181 Pages) Ayurveda and the Mind Janina Fisher (367 Pages) Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors John Bowlby (133 Pages) A Secure Base Bessel van der Kolk (454 Pages) The Body Keeps the Score Steven Porges (37 pages) Yoga and Polyvagal Theory, from Polyvagal Safety Cynthia Dale (999 pages) Llewellyn's Complete Book of Chakras SECTION 1. CHAKRA FUNDAMENTALS AND BASIC PRACTICES s SECTION 2: CHAKRAS IN DEPTH. HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDINGS (54 pages) Fifty Years of Attachment Theory: The Donald Winnicott Memorial Lecture (477 Pages) Attachment Disturbances in Adults Dana S. Dunn, Jane S. Halonen (308 Pages) The Psychology Major's Companion (5 Pages) Walter Wink The Myth of Redemptive Violence Sarah Gison and Michael S. Gazzaniga (1072 Pages) Psychology In Your Life Walkthrough If you are interested to follow my steps more closely, check out the containing scripts and examples. walkthrough on GitHub, Conclusion Now that I have my processes refined, and feel confident working with prompt formats, I will conduct further tests. In fact, i already have conducted further tests and rankings (will publish those next), but of course will do more tests again and continue learning! I still believe if you want to get the best results for whatever task you perform with AI, you ought to run your own experiments and see what works best. Don’t rely solely on popular model rankings, but use them to guide your own research. Additional Resources ( ) Pressure-tested the most popular open-source LLMs (Large Language Models) for their Long Context Recall abilities u/ramprasad27 Part 2 / - 💢 Pressure testing the context window of open LLMs LeonEricsson llmcontext Chatbox Arena Leaderboard u/WolframRavenwolf 🐺🐦‍⬛ LLM Comparison/Test: Ranking updated with 10 new models (the best 7Bs)! u/WolframRavenwolf 🐺🐦‍⬛ LLM Prompt Format Comparison/Test: Mixtral 8x7B Instruct with 17 different instruct templates Vectara Hallucination leaderboard Also appears . here

PrivateGPT for Book Summarization: Testing and Ranking Configuration Variables

বই সংক্ষিপ্তকরণের জন্য ব্যক্তিগত জিপিটি: টেস্টিং এবং র‌্যাঙ্কিং কনফিগারেশন ভেরিয়েবল

PrivateGPT für die Buchzusammenfassung: Test- und Ranking-Konfigurationsvariablen

PrivateGPT para resumen de libros: variables de configuración de prueba y clasificación

PrivateGPT pour la synthèse de livres : variables de configuration de test et de classement

पुस्तक सारांश के लिए PrivateGPT: परीक्षण और रैंकिंग कॉन्फ़िगरेशन चर

書籍の要約のための PrivateGPT: 構成変数のテストとランク付け

도서 요약을 위한 PrivateGPT: 구성 변수 테스트 및 순위 지정

PrivateGPT para resumo de livros: teste e classificação de variáveis de configuração

PrivateGPT для обобщения книг: тестирование и ранжирование переменных конфигурации

Kitap Özetleme için PrivateGPT: Yapılandırma Değişkenlerini Test Etme ve Sıralama

PrivateGPT dành cho tóm tắt sách: Kiểm tra và xếp hạng các biến cấu hình

用于书籍摘要的 PrivateGPT：测试和排名配置变量

CHANGES AT MILTON.

"THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE."

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . PAUL MONTAGUE'S VINDICATION. here PAUL MONTAGUE'S VINDICATION. It is hoped that the reader need hardly be informed that Hetta Carbury was a very miserable young woman as soon as she decided that duty compelled her to divide herself altogether from Paul Montague. I think that she was irrational; but to her it seemed that the offence against herself,—the offence against her own dignity as a woman,—was too great to be forgiven. There can be no doubt that it would all have been forgiven with the greatest ease had Paul told the story before it had reached her ears from any other source. Had he said to her,—when her heart was softest towards him,—I once loved another woman, and that woman is here now in London, a trouble to me, persecuting me, and her history is so and so, and the history of my love for her was after this fashion, and the history of my declining love is after that fashion, and of this at any rate you may be sure, that this woman has never been near my heart from the first moment in which I saw you;—had he told it to her thus, there would not have been an opening for anger. And he doubtless would have so told it, had not Hetta's brother interfered too quickly. He was then forced to exculpate himself, to confess rather than to tell his own story,—and to admit facts which wore the air of having been concealed, and which had already been conceived to be altogether damning if true. It was that journey to Lowestoft, not yet a month old, which did the mischief,—a journey as to which Hetta was not slow in understanding all that Roger Carbury had thought about it, though Roger would say nothing of it to herself. Paul had been staying at the seaside with this woman in amicable intimacy,—this horrid woman,—in intimacy worse than amicable, and had been visiting her daily at Islington! Hetta felt quite sure that he had never passed a day without going there since the arrival of the woman; and everybody would know what that meant. And during this very hour he had been,—well, perhaps not exactly making love to herself, but looking at her and talking to her, and behaving to her in a manner such as could not but make her understand that he intended to make love to her. Of course they had really understood it, since they had met at Madame Melmotte's first ball, when she had made a plea that she could not allow herself to dance with him more than,—say half-a-dozen times. Of course she had not intended him then to know that she would receive his love with favour; but equally of course she had known that he must so feel it. She had not only told herself, but had told her mother, that her heart was given away to this man; and yet the man during this very time was spending his hours with a—woman, with a strange American woman, to whom he acknowledged that he had been once engaged. How could she not quarrel with him? How could she refrain from telling him that everything must be over between them? Everybody was against him,—her mother, her brother, and her cousin: and she felt that she had not a word to say in his defence. A horrid woman! A wretched, bad, bold American intriguing woman! It was terrible to her that a friend of hers should ever have attached himself to such a creature;—but that he should have come to her with a second tale of love long, long before he had cleared himself from the first;—perhaps with no intention of clearing himself from the first! Of course she could not forgive him! No;—she would never forgive him. She would break her heart for him. That was a matter of course; but she would never forgive him. She knew well what it was that her mother wanted. Her mother thought that by forcing her into a quarrel with Montague she would force her also into a marriage with Roger Carbury. But her mother would find out that in that she was mistaken. She would never marry her cousin, though she would be always ready to acknowledge his worth. She was sure now that she would never marry any man. As she made this resolve she had a wicked satisfaction in feeling that it would be a trouble to her mother;—for though she was altogether in accord with Lady Carbury as to the iniquities of Paul Montague she was not the less angry with her mother for being so ready to expose those iniquities. Oh, with what slow, cautious fingers, with what heartbroken tenderness did she take out from its guardian case the brooch which Paul had given her! It had as yet been an only present, and in thanking him for it, which she had done with full, free-spoken words of love, she had begged him to send her no other, so that that might ever be to her,—to her dying day,—the one precious thing that had been given to her by her lover while she was yet a girl. Now it must be sent back;—and, no doubt, it would go to that abominable woman! But her fingers lingered over it as she touched it, and she would fain have kissed it, had she not told herself that she would have been disgraced, even in her solitude, by such a demonstration of affection. She had given her answer to Paul Montague; and, as she would have no further personal correspondence with him, she took the brooch to her mother with a request that it might be returned. "Of course, my dear, I will send it back to him. Is there nothing else?" "No, mamma;—nothing else. I have no letters, and no other present. You always knew everything that took place. If you will just send that back to him,—without a word. You won't say anything,—will you, mamma?" "There is nothing for me to say if you have really made him understand you." "I think he understood me, mamma. You need not doubt about that." "He has behaved very, very badly,—from the beginning," said Lady Carbury. But Hetta did not really think that the young man had behaved very badly from the beginning, and certainly did not wish to be told of his misbehaviour. No doubt she thought that the young man had behaved very well in falling in love with her directly he saw her;—only that he had behaved so badly in taking Mrs. Hurtle to Lowestoft afterwards! "It's no good talking about that, mamma. I hope you will never talk of him any more." "He is quite unworthy," said Lady Carbury. "I can't bear to—have him—abused," said Hetta sobbing. "My dear Hetta, I have no doubt this has made you for the time unhappy. Such little accidents do make people unhappy—for the time. But it will be much for the best that you should endeavour not to be so sensitive about it. The world is too rough and too hard for people to allow their feelings full play. You have to look out for the future, and you can best do so by resolving that Paul Montague shall be forgotten at once." "Oh, mamma, don't. How is a person to resolve? Oh, mamma, don't say any more." "But, my dear, there is more that I must say. Your future life is before you, and I must think of it, and you must think of it. Of course you must be married." "There is no of course at all." "Of course you must be married," continued Lady Carbury, "and of course it is your duty to think of the way in which this may be best done. My income is becoming less and less every day. I already owe money to your cousin, and I owe money to Mr. Broune." "Money to Mr. Broune!" "Yes,—to Mr. Broune. I had to pay a sum for Felix which Mr. Broune told me ought to be paid. And I owe money to tradesmen. I fear that I shall not be able to keep on this house. And they tell me,—your cousin and Mr. Broune,—that it is my duty to take Felix out of London,—probably abroad." "Of course I shall go with you." "It may be so at first; but, perhaps, even that may not be necessary. Why should you? What pleasure could you have in it? Think what my life must be with Felix in some French or German town!" "Mamma, why don't you let me be a comfort to you? Why do you speak of me always as though I were a burden?" "Everybody is a burden to other people. It is the way of life. But you,—if you will only yield in ever so little,—you may go where you will be no burden, where you will be accepted simply as a blessing. You have the opportunity of securing comfort for your whole life, and of making a friend, not only for yourself, but for me and your brother, of one whose friendship we cannot fail to want." "Mamma, you cannot really mean to talk about that now?" "Why should I not mean it? What is the use of indulging in high-flown nonsense? Make up your mind to be the wife of your cousin Roger." "This is horrid," said Hetta, bursting out in her agony. "Cannot you understand that I am broken-hearted about Paul, that I love him from my very soul, that parting from him is like tearing my heart in pieces? I know that I must, because he has behaved so very badly,—and because of that wicked woman! And so I have. But I did not think that in the very next hour you would bid me give myself to somebody else! I will never marry Roger Carbury. You may be quite—quite sure that I shall never marry any one. If you won't take me with you when you go away with Felix, I must stay behind and try and earn my bread. I suppose I could go out as a nurse." Then, without waiting for a reply she left the room and betook herself to her own apartment. Lady Carbury did not even understand her daughter. She could not conceive that she had in any way acted unkindly in taking the opportunity of Montague's rejection for pressing the suit of the other lover. She was simply anxious to get a husband for her daughter,—as she had been anxious to get a wife for her son,—in order that her child might live comfortably. But she felt that whenever she spoke common sense to Hetta, her daughter took it as an offence, and flew into tantrums, being altogether unable to accommodate herself to the hard truths of the world. Deep as was the sorrow which her son brought upon her, and great as was the disgrace, she could feel more sympathy for him than for the girl. If there was anything that she could not forgive in life it was romance. And yet she, at any rate, believed that she delighted in romantic poetry! At the present moment she was very wretched; and was certainly unselfish in her wish to see her daughter comfortably settled before she commenced those miserable roamings with her son which seemed to be her coming destiny. In these days she thought a good deal of Mr. Broune's offer, and of her own refusal. It was odd that since that refusal she had seen more of him, and had certainly known much more of him than she had ever seen or known before. Previous to that little episode their intimacy had been very fictitious, as are many intimacies. They had played at being friends, knowing but very little of each other. But now, during the last five or six weeks,—since she had refused his offer,—they had really learned to know each other. In the exquisite misery of her troubles, she had told him the truth about herself and her son, and he had responded, not by compliments, but by real aid and true counsel. His whole tone was altered to her, as was hers to him. There was no longer any egregious flattery between them,—and he, in speaking to her, would be almost rough to her. Once he had told her that she would be a fool if she did not do so and so. The consequence was that she almost regretted that she had allowed him to escape. But she certainly made no effort to recover the lost prize, for she told him all her troubles. It was on that afternoon, after her disagreement with her daughter, that Marie Melmotte came to her. And, on that same evening, closeted with Mr. Broune in her back room, she told him of both occurrences. "If the girl has got the money—," she began, regretting her son's obstinacy. "I don't believe a bit of it," said Broune. "From all that I can hear, I don't think that there is any money. And if there is, you may be sure that Melmotte would not let it slip through his fingers in that way. I would not have anything to do with it." "You think it is all over with the Melmottes?" "A rumour reached me just now that he had been already arrested." It was now between nine and ten in the evening. "But as I came away from my room, I heard that he was down at the House. That he will have to stand a trial for forgery, I think there cannot be a doubt, and I imagine that it will be found that not a shilling will be saved out of the property." "What a wonderful career it has been!" "Yes,—the strangest thing that has come up in our days. I am inclined to think that the utter ruin at this moment has been brought about by his reckless personal expenditure." "Why did he spend such a lot of money?" "Because he thought that he could conquer the world by it, and obtain universal credit. He very nearly succeeded too. Only he had forgotten to calculate the force of the envy of his competitors." "You think he has committed forgery?" "Certainly, I think so. Of course we know nothing as yet." "Then I suppose it is better that Felix should not have married her." "Certainly better. No redemption was to have been had on that side, and I don't think you should regret the loss of such money as his." Lady Carbury shook her head, meaning probably to imply that even Melmotte's money would have had no bad odour to one so dreadfully in want of assistance as her son. "At any rate do not think of it any more." Then she told him her grief about Hetta. "Ah, there," said he, "I feel myself less able to express an authoritative opinion." "He doesn't owe a shilling," said Lady Carbury, "and he is really a fine gentleman." "But if she doesn't like him?" "Oh, but she does. She thinks him to be the finest person in the world. She would obey him a great deal sooner than she would me. But she has her mind stuffed with nonsense about love." "A great many people, Lady Carbury, have their minds stuffed with that nonsense." "Yes;—and ruin themselves with it, as she will do. Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. And those who will have it when they can't afford it, will come to the ground like this Mr. Melmotte. How odd it seems! It isn't a fortnight since we all thought him the greatest man in London." Mr. Broune only smiled, not thinking it worth his while to declare that he had never held that opinion about the late idol of Abchurch Lane. On the following morning, very early, while Melmotte was still lying, as yet undiscovered, on the floor of Mr. Longestaffe's room, a letter was brought up to Hetta by the maid-servant, who told her that Mr. Montague had delivered it with his own hands. She took it greedily, and then repressing herself, put it with an assumed gesture of indifference beneath her pillow. But as soon as the girl had left the room she at once seized her treasure. It never occurred to her as yet to think whether she would or would not receive a letter from her dismissed lover. She had told him that he must go, and go for ever, and had taken it for granted that he would do so,—probably willingly. No doubt he would be delighted to return to the American woman. But now that she had the letter, she allowed no doubt to come between her and the reading of it. As soon as she was alone she opened it, and she ran through its contents without allowing herself a moment for thinking, as she went on, whether the excuses made by her lover were or were not such as she ought to accept. Dearest Hetta, I think you have been most unjust to me, and if you have ever loved me I cannot understand your injustice. I have never deceived you in anything, not by a word, or for a moment. Unless you mean to throw me over because I did once love another woman, I do not know what cause of anger you have. I could not tell you about Mrs. Hurtle till you had accepted me, and, as you yourself must know, I had had no opportunity to tell you anything afterwards till the story had reached your ears. I hardly know what I said the other day, I was so miserable at your accusation. But I suppose I said then, and I again declare now, that I had made up my mind that circumstances would not admit of her becoming my wife before I had ever seen you, and that I have certainly never wavered in my determination since I saw you. I can with safety refer to Roger as to this, because I was with him when I so determined, and made up my mind very much at his instance. This was before I had ever even met you. If I understand it all right you are angry because I have associated with Mrs. Hurtle since I so determined. I am not going back to my first acquaintance with her now. You may blame me for that if you please,—though it cannot have been a fault against you. But, after what had occurred, was I to refuse to see her when she came to England to see me? I think that would have been cowardly. Of course I went to her. And when she was all alone here, without a single other friend, and telling me that she was unwell, and asking me to take her down to the seaside, was I to refuse? I think that that would have been unkind. It was a dreadful trouble to me. But of course I did it. She asked me to renew my engagement. I am bound to tell you that, but I know in telling you that it will go no farther. I declined, telling her that it was my purpose to ask another woman to be my wife. Of course there has been anger and sorrow,—anger on her part and sorrow on mine. But there has been no doubt. And at last she yielded. As far as she was concerned my trouble was over,—except in so far that her unhappiness has been a great trouble to me,—when, on a sudden, I found that the story had reached you in such a form as to make you determined to quarrel with me! Of course you do not know it all, for I cannot tell you all without telling her history. But you know everything that in the least concerns yourself, and I do say that you have no cause whatever for anger. I am writing at night. This evening your brooch was brought to me with three or four cutting words from your mother. But I cannot understand that if you really love me, you should wish to separate yourself from me,—or that, if you ever loved me, you should cease to love me now because of Mrs. Hurtle. I am so absolutely confused by the blow that I hardly know what I am writing, and take first one outrageous idea into my head and then another. My love for you is so thorough and so intense that I cannot bring myself to look forward to living without you, now that you have once owned that you have loved me. I cannot think it possible that love, such as I suppose yours must have been, could be made to cease all at a moment. Mine can't. I don't think it is natural that we should be parted. If you want corroboration of my story go yourself to Mrs. Hurtle. Anything is better than that we both should be broken-hearted. Yours most affectionately, Paul Montague. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2004). The Way We Live Now. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5231/pg5231-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

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