| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: seeing that in the minor expenses and loyal costs of the proceedings,
he spends as much as on the horses in his stable. He loves me well, as
all good cuckolds should love the man who aids them, to plant,
cultivate, water and dig the natural garden of Venus, and he does
nothing without me."
Now these practices came back again to the memory of the shepherd, who
was illuminated by the light issuing from his danger, and counselled
by the intelligence of those measures of self-preservation, of which
every animal possesses a sufficient dose to go to the end of his ball
of life. So Chiquon gained with hasty feet the Rue de la Calandre,
where the jeweller should be supping with his companion, and after
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: art was in A LOVER'S COMPLAINT, where Shakespeare says of him:-
In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either's aptness, as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.
* * * * * * * *
So on the tip of his subduing tongue,
All kind of arguments and questions deep,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: celebrated oval of her face was divinely pale; she had laid her hat
aside; I could see a faint down like the bloom of fruit softening the
silken contours of a cheek itself so delicate. There was a pathetic
charm about her face with its double cluster of fair hair; her
brilliant gray eyes were veiled by a mist of tears; her nose,
delicately carved as a Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils; her
little mouth, like a child's even now; her long queenly throat, with
the veins standing out upon it; her chin, flushed for the moment by
some secret despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands that
trembled under her gloves, everything about her told of violent
feeling. The feverish twitching of her eyebrows betrayed her pain. She
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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 The Cavalry General by Xenophon: III
I come at length to certain duties which devolve upon the general of
cavalry himself in person: and first and foremost, it concerns him to
obtain the favour of the gods by sacrifices in behalf of the state
cavalry; and in the next place to make the great procession at the
festivals a spectacle worth seeing; and further, with regard to all
those public shows demanded by the state, wherever held,[1] whether in
the grounds of the Acadamy or the Lyceum, at Phaleron or within the
hippodrome, it is his business as commander of the knights to see that
every pageant of the sort is splendidly exhibited.
[1] Cf. Theophr. "Ch." vii. (Jebb ad loc. p. 204, n. 25).
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