| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: decided. "I'll go to the mayor's office of your arrondissement, and
get Olympe's register of birth, and put up the banns. The marriage
must take place a week from Saturday."
"How he goes it, the rascal!" cried the admiring Madame Cardinal,
pushing her formidable son-in-law by the shoulder.
As he went downstairs Cerizet was surprised to see, through one of the
small round windows, an old man, evidently du Portail, walking in the
garden with a very important member of the government, Comte Martial
de la Roche-Hugon. He stopped in the courtyard when he reached it, as
if to examine the old house, built in the reign of Louis XIV., the
yellow walls of which, though of freestone, were bent like the elderly
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly
mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English
drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had
stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came
from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more
profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the
things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when
she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on
her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns
carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and
unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: And when you came to think of it, these aristocrats and
military men and so on, had no other notion of making money
save by directorships. Clearly, that was the way of it.
Plowden had remembered Kervick's name, when the chance
arose to give the old boy a leg up, and then had clean
forgotten the circumstance. The episode rather increased
his liking for Plowden.
He glanced briefly, under the impulse of his thought,
to where the peer sat, or rather sprawled, in a big low chair
before the fire. He was so nearly recumbent in it, indeed,
that there was nothing to be seen of him but an elbow,
The Market-Place |
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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: she cried, clapping her hands and jumping. "I will tell you
everything----"
"What, is there more to come?" asked her father, smiling.
The child's complete and effervescent innocence had restored her
father's peace of mind.
"A confession of the first importance," said she. "I loved him without
knowing him; and, for the last hour, since seeing him, I am crazy
about him."
"A little too crazy!" said the Baron, who was enjoying the sight of
this guileless passion.
"Do not punish me for confiding in you," replied she. "It is so
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