| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: trees of a lime-tree avenue planted in a gully below the vineyards.
There are only two acres of vineyard at most, the ground rising at the
back of the house so steeply that it is no very easy matter to
scramble up among the vines. The slope, covered with green trailing
shoots, ends within about five feet of the house wall in a ditch-like
passage always damp and cold and full of strong growing green things,
fed by the drainage of the highly cultivated ground above, for rainy
weather washes down the manure into the garden on the terrace.
A vinedresser's cottage also leans against the western gable, and is
in some sort a continuation of the kitchen. Stone walls or espaliers
surround the property, and all sorts of fruit-trees are planted among
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: IV
THE DISCOVERY IN PAUL STREET
A few months after Villers'meeting with Herbert, Mr.
Clarke was sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth,
resolutely guarding his fancies from wandering in the direction
of the bureau. For more than a week he had succeeded in keeping
away from the "Memoirs," and he cherished hopes of a complete
self-reformation; but, in spite of his endeavours, he could not
hush the wonder and the strange curiosity that the last case he
had written down had excited within him. He had put the case,
or rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific
The Great God Pan |
