| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall.
Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her
class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
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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 Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: the fire, and again his mind shuddered and shrank back,
appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable elements
enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh. Before
him stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the
forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the swaying
leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long
distance, the two figure moved toward him. One was Rachel, but
the other?
Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at
the end of the account, as he had written it in his book, he
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as
me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment,
but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet.
It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to
gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and
how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell
again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's
cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange
insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's
house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter
master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.
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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 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: "are they going to put him in the ministry?"
"Not yet, I think. More likely he has been speculating on
the Bourse, and has lost money."
"M. and Madame de Villefort," cried Baptistin. They entered.
M. de Villefort, notwithstanding his self-control, was
visibly affected, and when Monte Cristo touched his hand, he
felt it tremble. "Certainly, women alone know how to
dissimulate," said Monte Cristo to himself, glancing at
Madame Danglars, who was smiling on the procureur, and
embracing his wife. After a short time, the count saw
Bertuccio, who, until then, had been occupied on the other
The Count of Monte Cristo |
