Today's Stichomancy for Pablo Picasso

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac:

Massimilla was as one of the Virgin visions seen in dreams, which vanish at cock-crow, but whom we recognize when we find them again in their realm of glory,--in the works of some great painters of Heaven.

In the evening the lovers went to the theatre. This is the way of Italian life: love in the morning; music in the evening; the night for sleep. How far preferable is this existence to that of a country where every one expends his lungs and strength in politics, without contributing any more, single-minded, to the progress of affairs than a grain of sand can make a cloud of dust. Liberty, in those strange lands, consists in the right to squabble over public concerns, to take care of oneself, to waste time in patriotic undertakings each more

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen:

"My Dear Susan (cried he in a tone of the greatest amazement) You do not really think they bear the least resemblance to their Father! He is so very plain!--but I beg your pardon--I had entirely forgotten to whom I was speaking--"

"Oh! pray dont mind me; (replied I) every one knows Sir George is horribly ugly, and I assure you I always thought him a fright."

"You surprise me extremely (answered William) by what you say both with respect to Sir George and his Daughters. You cannot think your Husband so deficient in personal Charms as you speak of, nor can you surely see any resemblance between him and the

Love and Friendship

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac:

road over the shoulder of one of the Rouxey hills to join the highroad. The estate belonging to this park and house was extensive, but badly cultivated; there were chalets on both hills and neglected forests of timber. It was all wild and deserted, left to the care of nature, abandoned to chance growths, but full of sublime and unexpected beauty. You may now imagine les Rouxey.

It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped with genius, by which Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be suspected. It is enough to say that it was in obedience to her mother that she left Besancon in the month of May 1835, in an antique traveling carriage

Albert Savarus

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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde:

Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.

And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand, Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied The boy's pale body stretched upon the sand, And feared Poseidon's treachery, and cried, And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.

Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be So dread a thing to feel a sea-god's arms Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny, And longed to listen to those subtle charms