| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: Neither plain nor pretty, Madame de Listomere has white teeth, a
dazzling skin, and very red lips; she is tall and well-made; her foot
is small and slender, and she does not put it forth; her eyes, far
from being dulled like those of so many Parisian women, have a gentle
glow which becomes quite magical if, by chance, she is animated. A
soul is then divined behind that rather indefinite form. If she takes
an interest in the conversation she displays a grace which is
otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then
she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We
find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that
some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: themselves thus confronted.
The door was fastened by a catch and a latch with an inside key,
to which at night a chain and two bolts were added. Carefully
abstaining from thrusting against each other, Ann Veronica and
her father began an absurdly desperate struggle, the one to open
the door, the other to keep it fastened. She seized the key, and
he grasped her hand and squeezed it roughly and painfully between
the handle and the ward as she tried to turn it. His grip
twisted her wrist. She cried out with the pain of it.
A wild passion of shame and self-disgust swept over her. Her
spirit awoke in dismay to an affection in ruins, to the immense
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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 An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: without a certain financial ability, which many persons used to their
profit. Like a ruined gambler who advises neophytes, he pointed out
enterprises and speculations, together with the means and chances of
conducting them. He was thought a good administrator, and it was often
a question of making him mayor of Alencon; but the memory of his
underhand jobbery still clung to him, and he was never received at the
prefecture. All the succeeding governments, even that of the Hundred
Days, refused to appoint him mayor of Alencon,--a place he coveted,
which, could he have had it, would, he thought, have won him the hand
of a certain old maid on whom his matrimonial views now turned.
Du Bousquier's aversion to the Imperial government had thrown him at
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: compressions, that a hand to be removed is capable of receiving--to get it
press'd a hair breadth of one side out of her way.
Whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him sensible, that it
was her leg (and no one's else) at the bottom of the sentry-box, which
slightly press'd against the calf of his--So that my uncle Toby being thus
attack'd and sore push'd on both his wings--was it a wonder, if now and
then, it put his centre into disorder?--
--The duce take it! said my uncle Toby.
Chapter 4.XLI.
These attacks of Mrs. Wadman, you will readily conceive to be of different
kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of,
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