| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: when Louis had returned to her side. "That is all your own. Oh me! you
would have been better off if your father----"
"My father," cried the boy, "where is he?"
"He is dead," she said, laying her finger on her lips; "he died to
save my honor and my life."
She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, she would have
wept for pain.
"Louis," she continued, "swear to me, as I lie here, that you will
forget all that you have written, all that I have told you."
"Yes, mother."
"Kiss me, dear angel."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: than I was at Lympne, and that is all. And Cavor has committed suicide in
a more elaborate way than any human being ever did before. So the story
closes as, finally and completely as a dream. It fits in so little with
all the other things of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all
human experience, the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these
weightless times, that indeed there are moments when, in spite of my moon
gold, I do more than half believe myself that the whole thing was a dream.
...
Chapter 22
The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee
WHEN I had finished my account of my return to the earth at Littlestone, I
The First Men In The Moon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: had only the canvas! Nature, in truth, had largely rounded it, and
if memory, hovering about it, sometimes holds her breath, this is
because the voice that comes back was really golden.
Though the great man was an inmate and didn't dress, he kept dinner
on this occasion waiting, and the first words he uttered on coming
into the room were an elated announcement to Mulville that he had
found out something. Not catching the allusion and gaping
doubtless a little at his face, I privately asked Adelaide what he
had found out. I shall never forget the look she gave me as she
replied: "Everything!" She really believed it. At that moment,
at any rate, he had found out that the mercy of the Mulvilles was
|
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 Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: as he. But if this news were true, no more was to be feared from
Agrippa's scheming.
"The dungeons of Tiberias are hard to open, and sometimes life itself
is uncertain within their depths," said Herodias, with grim
significance.
Antipas understood her; and, although she was Agrippa's sister, her
atrocious insinuation seemed entirely justifiable to the tetrarch.
Murder and outrage were to be expected in the management of political
intrigues; they were a part of the fatal inheritance of royal houses;
and in the family of Herodias nothing was more common.
Then she rapidly unfolded to the tetrarch the secrets of her recent
Herodias |
