| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: "M. le Comte surely owes me so much," smiled Lucien.
Cointet and Petit-Claud heard these farewell speeches.
"Well, well, we are done for now," Cointet muttered in his
confederate's ear. Petit-Claud, thunderstruck by Lucien's success,
amazed by his brilliant wit and varying charm, was gazing at Francoise
de la Haye; the girl's whole face was full of admiration for Lucien.
"Be like your friend," she seemed to say to her betrothed. A gleam of
joy flitted over Petit-Claud's countenance.
"We still have a whole day before the prefect's dinner; I will answer
for everything."
An hour later, as Petit-Claud and Lucien walked home together, Lucien
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Wings through a glimmering gallery, till he marked
The portal of King Pellam's chapel wide
And inward to the wall; he stept behind;
Thence in a moment heard them pass like wolves
Howling; but while he stared about the shrine,
In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints,
Beheld before a golden altar lie
The longest lance his eyes had ever seen,
Point-painted red; and seizing thereupon
Pushed through an open casement down, leaned on it,
Leapt in a semicircle, and lit on earth;
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: at the North no one knew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up
Poland in her coffin, irritated glances watching France narrowly all
over Europe, England, a suspected ally, ready to give a push to that
which was tottering and to hurl herself on that which should fall,
the peerage sheltering itself behind Beccaria to refuse four heads
to the law, the fleurs-de-lys erased from the King's carriage,
the cross torn from Notre Dame, Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ruined,
Benjamin Constant dead in indigence, Casimir Perier dead in the
exhaustion of his power; political and social malady breaking
out simultaneously in the two capitals of the kingdom, the one
in the city of thought, the other in the city of toil; at Paris
Les Miserables |
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: "Money!" she said at last. "Always money!"
"You touched me deeply," said Crevel, reminded by these words of the
woman's humiliation, "when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!--
You perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about me,
it would have been yours.--Come, do you really want such a sum?"
As she heard this question, big with two hundred thousand francs,
Adeline forgot the odious insults heaped on her by this cheap-jack
fine gentleman, before the tempting picture of success described by
Machiavelli-Crevel, who only wanted to find out her secrets and laugh
over them with Valerie.
"Oh! I will do anything, everything," cried the unhappy woman.
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