| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from the
instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the hands
of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age her
offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so
complete was her enervation, that at last the very joy of giving life, the
glory and beatitude of a virile womanhood, became distasteful; and she
sought to evade it, not because of its interference with more imperious
duties to those already born of her, or to her society, but because her
existence of inactivity had robbed her of all joy in strenuous exertion and
endurance in any form. Finely clad, tenderly housed, life became for her
merely the gratification of her own physical and sexual appetites, and the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: opposite to her, and on either side of the litter the Cardinals of
Amboise, Chatillon, Boulogne, and de Lenoncourt in their episcopal
robes. She left her litter at the church of Notre-Dame, where she
was received by the clergy. After offering her prayer, she was
conducted by the rue de la Calandre to the palace, where the royal
supper was served in the great hall. She there appeared, seated at
the middle of the marble table, beneath a velvet dais strewn with
golden fleur-de-lis."
We may here put an end to one of those popular beliefs which are
repeated in many writers from Sauval down. It has been said that Henri
II. pushed his neglect of the proprieties so far as to put the
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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 The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Death without quarter!
Mid-ships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water!
"As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt
With his prey laden,
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
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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 Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs."
"I hope I may. If that be so, cannot your friend settle your
difficulties here? You could live quietly at Lanstrac for five or six
years on your wife's income, and so recover yourself."
"No assignment or economy on my part could pay off fifteen hundred
thousand francs of debt, in which my wife is involved to the amount of
five hundred and fifty thousand."
"You cannot mean to say that in four years you have incurred a million
and a half of debt?"
"Nothing is more certain, Mathias. Did I not give those diamonds to my
wife? Did I not spend the hundred and fifty thousand I received from
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