| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: was never to end. Madame Cesar appeared to advantage behind the
counter. Her celebrated beauty had an enormous influence upon the
sales, and the beautiful Madame Birotteau became a topic among the
fashionable young men of the Empire. If Cesar was sometimes accused of
royalism, the world did justice to his honesty; if a few neighboring
shopkeepers envied his happiness, every one at least thought him
worthy of it. The bullet which struck him on the steps of Saint-Roch
gave him the reputation of being mixed up with political secrets, and
also of being a courageous man,--though he had no military courage in
his heart, and not the smallest political idea in his brain. Upon
these grounds the worthy people of the arrondissement made him captain
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: Thrice the great cry rings rippling through the gray air, and
over the green sea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs, where
the huge white flashes are,--sheet-lightning of breakers,--and
over the weird wash of corpses coming in.
It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, hastening to rescue the
living, to gather in the dead.
The tremendous tragedy is over!
Out of the Sea's Strength
I.
There are regions of Louisiana coast whose aspect seems not of
the present, but of the immemorial past--of that epoch when low
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