| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: fifteen years placed between Augustine and himself. Being also too
clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur Guillaume's purpose, he knew
his inexorable principles well enough to feel sure that the second
would never marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose
heart was as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered
in silence.
This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the
heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La
Trappe. But to give a full account of events as well as of feelings,
it is needful to go back to some months before the scene with which
this story opens. At dusk one evening, a young man passing the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: as celebrated in the sentimental atmosphere of
a Protestant Church, with an ancient Eucharistic feast of
real jollity and community of life under the acknowledged
presence of the god; or the Roman Catholic service of the
Mass, including its genuflexions and mock oblations and
droning ritual sing-song, with the actual sacrifice in early
days of an animal-god-victim on a blazing altar; and I think
my meaning will be clear. We do not want, of course,
to return to all the crudities and barbarities of the past; but
also we do not want to become attenuated and spiritualized
out of all mundane sense and recognition, and to live in an
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
