| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: "Why do you make this fuss?" asked Paul, leading Mathias into the
adjoining salon.
"To save you from being ruined," replied the old notary, in a whisper.
"You are determined to marry a girl and her mother who have already
squandered two millions in seven years; you are pledging yourself to a
debt of eleven hundred thousand francs to your children, to whom you
will have to account for the fortune you are acknowledging to have
received with their mother. You risk having your own fortune
squandered in five years, and to be left as naked as Saint-John
himself, besides being a debtor to your wife and children for enormous
sums. If you are determined to put your life in that boat, Monsieur le
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: had prolonged its sitting. Some vague forms were still moving
there and she could picture them to herself: Daman, the supreme
chief of sea-robbers, with a vengeful heart and the eyes of a
gazelle; Sentot, the sour fanatic with the big turban, that other
saint with a scanty loin cloth and ashes in his hair, and Tengga
whom she could imagine from hearsay, fat, good-tempered, crafty,
but ready to spill blood on his ambitious way and already bold
enough to flaunt a yellow state umbrella at the very gate of
Belarab's stockade--so they said.
She saw, she imagined, she even admitted now the reality of those
things no longer a mere pageant marshalled for her vision with
The Rescue |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: hand clings to mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown
elements of which we are compounded awake and run together at a
look; the clay of the earth remembers its independent life and
yearns to join us; we are drawn together as the stars are turned
about in space, or as the tides ebb and flow, by things older and
greater than we ourselves.'
'Alas!' she said, 'what can I say to you? My fathers, eight
hundred years ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great,
cunning, and cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their
flags led in war; the king called them his cousin; the people, when
the rope was slung for them or when they returned and found their
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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 Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and
six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and
tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye
for colours and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed
with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him
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