| 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: ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: to be laid down before God as a covering and intercession for the
sins of my neighbour, which I am to take on myself, and so labour
and endure servitude in them, as if they were my own; for thus
has Christ done for us. This is true love and the genuine truth
of Christian life. But only there is it true and genuine where
there is true and genuine faith. Hence the Apostle attributes to
charity this quality: that she seeketh not her own.
We conclude therefore that a Christian man does not live in
himself, but in Christ and in his neighbour, or else is no
Christian: in Christ by faith; in his neighbour by love. By faith
he is carried upwards above himself to God, and by love he sinks
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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 Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: consideration of his life; and they believed him and
followed him to the chapel rejoicing, reconciled for
once to their lot.
After the service Rezanov went up to the hut of
the Chief-Manager, a habitation that leaked winter
and summer, and was equally deficient in light, ven-
tilation and order. But Baranhov in the sixteen
years of his exile had forgotten the bare lineaments
of comfort, and devoted his days to advancing the
interests of the Company, his nights, save when
sleep overcame him, to potations that would have
Rezanov |
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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: poetry, or a poet inexact in the details of business, and we
excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable,
unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take
a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly
stiletto, and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream
and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be
as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing
evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent. You do
not consider how little the child sees, or how swift he is to
weave what he has seen into bewildering fiction; and that he
cares no more for what you call truth, than you for a
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