| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: the front door, I rushed to a lonely stone tower, and there sobbed
my heart out in the darkness like a child. Looking round at last,
I saw that some one else was sitting on the staircase near me, also
crying.
So I said farewell to my father years before his death, and
the memory of it is dear to me, for I know that if I had seen him
before his death at Astapova he would have said just the same to
me.
To return to the question of death, I will say that so far
from being afraid of it, in his last days he often desired it; he
was more interested in it than afraid of it. This "greatest of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches. This gate demands
a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about
the property.
The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
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