| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: longer by the simple inability to cease looking at her.
She had been from the first of my seeing her practically
motionless, leaning back in her chair with a kind of thoughtful
grace and with her eyes vaguely directed, as it seemed on me, to
one of the boxes on my side of the house and consequently over my
head and out of my sight. The only movement she made for some time
was to finger with an ungloved hand and as if with the habit of
fondness the row of pearls on her neck, which my glass showed me to
be large and splendid. Her diamonds and pearls, in her solitude,
mystified me, making me, as she had had no such brave jewels in the
days of the Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-of improvement had
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: door of the house till she could speak to madame."
"You can go," said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. "What do you
want, mademoiselle?" he added, turning to the strange woman.
This "demoiselle" was the type of a woman who is never to be met with
except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the
pavement, like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris
before human industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass
decanters and sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She
is therefore a being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times
by the painter's brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal
of the etcher, she still escapes analysis, because she cannot be
Ferragus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: never." She smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency,
appreciated her acquisition. "And never about you. We keep clear of
you. We're wonderful. But I'll tell you what he does do," she
continued: "he tries to make me presents."
"Presents?" poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that HE
hadn't yet tried that in any quarter.
"Why you see," she explained, "he's as fine as ever in the
victoria; so that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours
--he likes it so--at the doors of shops, the sight of him there
helps me, when I come out, to know my carriage away off in the
rank. But sometimes, for a change, he goes with me into the shops,
|
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 Ursula by Honore de Balzac: closely allied to the very existence of civilized societies and
springing from the spirit of family. It rules in Geneva as in Vienna
and in Nemours, where, as we have seen, Zelie Minoret refused her
consent to a possible marriage of her son with the daughter of a
bastard. Still, all social laws have their exceptions. Savinien
thought he might bend his mother's pride before the inborn nobility of
Ursula. The struggle began at once. As soon as they were seated at
table his mother told him of the horrible letters, as she called them,
which the Kergarouets and the Portendueres had written her.
"There is no such thing as family in these days, mother," replied
Savinien, "nothing but individuals! The nobles are no longer a compact
|
