| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: wealthy house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone wrong."
"How much will monsieur give for the information," she asked, looking
at Gazonal, who was no longer surprised by anything.
"One hundred francs," he said.
"No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of refusal worthy of a macaw.
"Then say how much you want, my little Madame Nourrisson," cried
Bixiou catching her round the waist.
"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've been
in the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness.
Besides," she said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and
enforcing it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn't
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: little while, if you have any brains worth thinking about, you
will be satisfied, and then you will come up here to the greater
things. The old religions and their new offsets want still, I
see, to suppress all these things. Let them suppress. If they
can suppress. In their own people. Either road will bring you
here at last to the eternal search for knowledge and the great
adventure of power.'
'But incidentally,' said Rachel Borken; 'incidentally you have
half of humanity, you have womankind, very much specialised
for--for this love and reproduction that is so much less needed
than it was.'
The Last War: A World Set Free |
