| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: and-by, however, he too will find that it is pleasanter to live in the larder,
among flitches of bacon, and to rest by night, than to entrap a few solitary
mice in the granary. Go to! I know the stadtholders.
Carpenter. What such a fellow can say with impunity! Had I said such a
thing, I should not hold myself safe a moment.
Vansen. Do not make yourselves uneasy! God in heaven does not trouble
himself about you, poor worms, much less the Regent.
Jetter. Slanderer!
Vansen. I know some for whom it would be better if, instead of their own
high spirits, they had a little tailor's blood in their veins.
Carpenter. What mean you by that?
 Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: woman ever pardon such crimes against love? Unless she were an angel
descended from the skies, instead of a purified spirit ascending to
them, a loving woman would rather see her lover die than know him
happy with another. Thus, look at it as I would, my situation, after I
had once left Clochegourde for the Grenadiere, was as fatal to the
love of my choice as it was profitable to the transient love that held
me. Lady Dudley had calculated all this with consummate cleverness.
She owned to me later that if she had not met Madame de Mortsauf on
the moor she had intended to compromise me by haunting Clochegourde
until she did so.
When I met the countess that morning, and found her pale and depressed
 The Lily of the Valley |