Today's Stichomancy for Jane Seymour

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac:

'it was at that moment; but what could one do? Hortense showed her pretty face, one had to laugh. To keep my dignity, I flung her the six hundred francs. "There's for the girl," said I.' "

"That is Maxime all over!" cried La Palferine.

"More especially as it was little Croizeau's money," added Cardot the profound.

"Maxime scored a triumph," continued Desroches, "for Hortense exclaimed, 'Oh, if I had only known that it was you!' "

"A pretty 'confusion' indeed!" put in Malaga. "You have lost, milord," she added turning to the notary.

And in this way the cabinetmaker, to whom Malaga owed a hundred

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

To him than some shall be who knew not Christ.

Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, When the two companies shall be divided, The one for ever rich, the other poor.

What to your kings may not the Persians say, When they that volume opened shall behold In which are written down all their dispraises?

There shall be seen, among the deeds of Albert, That which ere long shall set the pen in motion, For which the realm of Prague shall be deserted.

There shall be seen the woe that on the Seine

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

Ah! vous savez bien que vous allez faire ce que je vous demande. Vous le savez bien, n'est-ce pas? . . . Moi, je sais bien.

LE JEUNE SYRIEN [faisant un signe au troisieme soldat] Faites sortir le prophete . . . La princesse Salome veut le voir.

SALOME. Ah!

LE PAGE D'HERODIAS. Oh! comme la lune a l'air etrange! On dirait la main d'une morte qui cherche e se couvrir avec un linceul.

LE JEUNE SYRIEN. Elle a l'air tres etrange. On dirait une petite princesse qui a des yeux d'ambre. A travers les nuages de mousseline elle sourit comme une petite princesse.

[Le prophete sort de la citerne. Salome le regarde et recule.]

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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde:

is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose silence is heard only of God; and not merely imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come