| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "Do you understand in the least?" asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame
de Clagny.
The Public Prosecutor's wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur
Gravier's, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened
herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face
at her neighbor, conveying, "They are looking at us; we must smile as
if we understood."
"Charming!" said the Mayoress to Gatien. "Pray go on, Monsieur
Lousteau."
Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to
keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, "Attention!"
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And terrors that began
When Death let fall a feather from his wings
And humbled the first man?
Because the weight of our humility,
Wherefrom we gain
A little wisdom and much pain,
Falls here too sore and there too tedious,
Are we in anguish or complacency,
Not looking far enough ahead
To see by what mad couriers we are led
Along the roads of the ridiculous,
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