| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: Messieurs Protez and Chiffreville, and found that their known
integrity was sufficient guarantee as to the honesty of their
operations with Monsieur Claes, to whom, moreover, they frequently
sent information of results obtained by chemists in Paris, for the
purpose of sparing him expense. Madame Claes begged the notary to keep
the nature of these purchases from the knowledge of the people of
Douai, lest they should declare the whole thing a mania; but Pierquin
replied that he had already delayed to the very last moment the
notarial deeds which the importance of the sum borrowed necessitated,
in order not to lessen the respect in which Monsieur Claes was held.
He then revealed the full extent of the evil, telling her plainly that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms of the human mind,
but what is the mind without them? As then infinite time, or an existence
out of time, which are the only possible explanations of eternal duration,
are equally inconceivable to us, let us substitute for them a hundred or a
thousand years after death, and ask not what will be our employment in
eternity, but what will happen to us in that definite portion of time; or
what is now happening to those who passed out of life a hundred or a
thousand years ago. Do we imagine that the wicked are suffering torments,
or that the good are singing the praises of God, during a period longer
than that of a whole life, or of ten lives of men? Is the suffering
physical or mental? And does the worship of God consist only of praise, or
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
II
A Thought
It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink,
With little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place.
III
At the Sea-side
A Child's Garden of Verses |
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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: less than five hundred francs. The great reason which the bourgeois
families have for employing him is this:--
"Say what you will of him, he lays by twenty thousand francs a year
with his notary."
As Grassou took a creditable part on the occasion of the riots of May
12th he was appointed an officer of the Legion of honor. He is a major
in the National Guard. The Museum of Versailles felt it incumbent to
order a battle-piece of so excellent a citizen, who thereupon walked
about Paris to meet his old comrades and have the happiness of saying
to them:--
"The King has given me an order for the Museum of Versailles."
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