| 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: increased the trouble which was the principal cause of his disasters.
Is it not a too-prolonged social flattery to paint men forever under
false colors, and never to reveal the actual causes which underlie
their vicissitudes, caused as they so often are by maladies? Physical
evil, considered under the aspect of its moral ravages, examined as to
its influence upon the mechanism of life, has been perhaps too much
neglected by the historians of the social kingdom. Madame Cesar had
guessed the secret of Roguin's household.
From the night of her marriage, the charming and only daughter of the
banker Chevrel conceived for the unhappy notary an insurmountable
antipathy, and wished to apply at once for a divorce. But Roguin,
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 Georgics by Virgil: Was keeping: Eurus spared his wintry blasts,
When first the flocks drank sunlight, and a race
Of men like iron from the hard glebe arose,
And wild beasts thronged the woods, and stars the heaven.
Nor could frail creatures bear this heavy strain,
Did not so large a respite interpose
'Twixt frost and heat, and heaven's relenting arms
Yield earth a welcome.
For the rest, whate'er
The sets thou plantest in thy fields, thereon
Strew refuse rich, and with abundant earth
Georgics |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: affair," said I.
"And it sets me ill to be complaining, whatever," said he, "and me but
new out of yon deil's haystack."
"And so you were unco weary of your haystack?" I asked.
"Weary's nae word for it," said he. "I'm not just precisely a man
that's easily cast down; but I do better with caller air and the lift
above my head. I'm like the auld Black Douglas (wasnae't?) that likit
better to hear the laverock sing than the mouse cheep. And yon place,
ye see, Davie - whilk was a very suitable place to hide in, as I'm free
to own - was pit mirk from dawn to gloaming. There were days (or
nights, for how would I tell one from other?) that seemed to me as long
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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 All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at his
examination; if he do not, for the promise of his life, and in
the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you, and
deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that
with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my
judgment in anything.
SECOND LORD.
O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he says he
has a stratagem for't: when your lordship sees the bottom of his
success in't, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of ore will
be melted, if you give him not John Drum's entertainment, your
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