| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: sprinkled with fresh sand, led into a large court-yard paved with
smooth square stones of a greenish color. On the left were the linen-
rooms, kitchens, and servants' hall; to the right, the wood-house,
coal-house, and offices, whose doors, walls, and windows were
decorated with designs kept exquisitely clean. The daylight, threading
its way between four red walls chequered with white lines, caught rosy
tints and reflections which gave a mysterious grace and fantastic
appearance to faces, and even to trifling details.
A second house, exactly like the building on the street, and called in
Flanders the "back-quarter," stood at the farther end of the court-
yard, and was used exclusively as the family dwelling. The first room
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: Clothed in a radiance not its own!"
The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within.
"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea."
And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'"
He moaned: he knew not what to say.
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: identity, and whose life I would fain hide from all the world, so as
to be sole master of the secret of her existence, and to bury it in
the depths of my heart.
The third phase I was not destined to see. It began when Lambert and I
were parted, for he did not leave college till he was eighteen, in the
summer of 1815. He had at that time lost his father and mother about
six months before. Finding no member of his family with whom his soul
could sympathize, expansive still, but, since our parting, thrown back
on himself, he made his home with his uncle, who was also his
guardian, and who, having been turned out of his benefice as a priest
who had taken the oaths, had come to settle at Blois. There Louis
Louis Lambert |
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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: was more interested in it than afraid of it. This "greatest of
mysteries" interested him to such a degree that his interest came
near to love. How eagerly he listened to accounts of the death of
his friends, Turgénieff, Gay, Leskóf,¹
Zhemtchúzhnikof² and others! He inquired after the
smallest matters; no detail, however trifling in appearance, was
without its interest and importance to him.
¹A novelist, died 1895.
²One of the authors of "Junker Schmidt."
His "Circle of Reading," November 7, the day he died, is
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