| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: language, of any man. All things smiled upon our traveller, and the
traveller smiled back in return. "Similia similibus,"--he believed in
homoeopathy. Puns, horse-laugh, monkish face, skin of a friar, true
Rabelaisian exterior, clothing, body, mind, and features, all pulled
together to put a devil-may-care jollity into every inch of his
person. Free-handed and easy-going, he might be recognized at once as
the favorite of grisettes, the man who jumps lightly to the top of a
stage-coach, gives a hand to the timid lady who fears to step down,
jokes with the postillion about his neckerchief and contrives to sell
him a cap, smiles at the maid and catches her round the waist or by
the heart; gurgles at dinner like a bottle of wine and pretends to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.
The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could
not pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.
"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.
"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I
have always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire
my death?"
"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a
part of my own life!" cried Don Juan.
("We can always SAY this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought;
"it is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: The Christian folk, in part upon the other;
Nor that the keys which were to me confided
Should e'er become the escutcheon on a banner,
That should wage war on those who are baptized;
Nor I be made the figure of a seal
To privileges venal and mendacious,
Whereat I often redden and flash with fire.
In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves
Are seen from here above o'er all the pastures!
O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still?
To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: best seats; and for the first few miles I discovered abundance of
excellent reasons for justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A
young fellow, apparently in somewhat better circumstances, who
came to take the seat beside me from preference, listened to my
reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An approximate nearness of
age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh
air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach
was lumbering along,--these things, together with an
indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of
those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with
the more complacency because the intercourse is by its very
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