| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: who came to solicit favors, or to confer with the queen as to the fate
and condition of Brittany, awaited in this pleasure-ground the
opportunity for an audience, either at the queen's rising, or at her
coming out to walk. Consequently, history has given the name of
"Perchoir aux Bretons" to this piece of ground, which, in our day, is
the fruit-garden of a worthy bourgeois, and forms a projection into
the place des Jesuites. The latter place was included in the gardens
of this beautiful royal residence, which had, as we have said, its
upper and its lower gardens. Not far from the place des Jesuites may
still be seen a pavilion built by Catherine de' Medici, where,
according to the historians of Blois, warm mineral baths were placed
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: rained. Now that I've been out in it with him,
I shan't dread it. After you once get cold clear
through, the feeling of the rain on you is sweet.
It seems to bring back feelings you had when
you were a baby. It carries you back into the
dark, before you were born; you can't see things,
but they come to you, somehow, and you know
them and aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like
that with the dead. If they feel anything at all,
it's the old things, before they were born, that
comfort people like the feeling of their own
O Pioneers! |
| 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: of which he thought so much. Were there sufficient grounds
for imagining that it would even interest her? He forced
his mind up to this question, as it were, many times,
and invariably it shied and evaded the leap.
There had been times, at Hadlow House, when Lady Cressage
had seemed supremely indifferent to the fact of his existence,
and there had been other times when it had appeared
manifest that he pleased her--or better, perhaps, that she
was willing to take note of how much she pleased him.
It must have been apparent to her--this fact that she
produced such an impression upon him. He reasoned this
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 The Republic by Plato: the left hand. Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their
messenger to men from the world below. And he beheld and saw the souls
departing after judgment at either chasm; some who came from earth, were
worn and travel-stained; others, who came from heaven, were clean and
bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest awhile in the meadow; here they
discoursed with one another of what they had seen in the other world.
Those who came from earth wept at the remembrance of their sorrows, but the
spirits from above spoke of glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He said
that for every evil deed they were punished tenfold--now the journey was of
a thousand years' duration, because the life of man was reckoned as a
hundred years--and the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He
The Republic |
