| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: marriage, founded on trust, became a surer thing; each of us settled
firmly into our own position; the countess enfolded me with her
nurturing care, with the white draperies of a love that was wholly
maternal; while my love for her, seraphic in her presence, seared me
as with hot irons when away from her. I loved her with a double love
which shot its arrows of desire, and then lost them in the sky, where
they faded out of sight in the impermeable ether. If you ask me why,
young and ardent, I continued in the deluding dreams of Platonic love,
I must own to you that I was not yet man enough to torture that woman,
who was always in dread of some catastrophe to her children, always
fearing some outburst of her husband's stormy temper, martyrized by
The Lily of the Valley |
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: conceal the idea of madness by softening the word. "But he is only so
at intervals, once a year, when the weather is very hot. Ah, what
evils have resulted from the emigration! How many fine lives ruined!
He would have been, I am sure of it, a great soldier, an honor to his
country--"
"I know," I said, interrupting in my turn to let her see that it was
useless to attempt to deceive me.
She stopped, laid one hand lightly on my brow, and looked at me. "Who
has sent you here," she said, "into this home? Has God sent me help, a
true friendship to support me?" She paused, then added, as she laid
her hand firmly upon mine, "For you are good and generous--" She
The Lily of the Valley |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: an end, and the miners move elsewhere, the town remains
behind them, like Palmyra in the desert. I suppose there
are, in no country in the world, so many deserted towns as
here in California.
The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, now so quiet
and sylvan, was once alive with mining camps and villages.
Here there would be two thousand souls under canvas; there
one thousand or fifteen hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in
a town of comfortable houses. But the luck had failed, the
mines petered out; and the army of miners had departed, and
left this quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes and deer
|
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: eyes of the drinkers, in their buttons, in their liquor, in the
pipes they smoked.
Mr Willet sat in what had been his accustomed place five years
before, with his eyes on the eternal boiler; and had sat there
since the clock struck eight, giving no other signs of life than
breathing with a loud and constant snore (though he was wide
awake), and from time to time putting his glass to his lips, or
knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and filling it anew. It was
now half-past ten. Mr Cobb and long Phil Parkes were his
companions, as of old, and for two mortal hours and a half, none of
the company had pronounced one word.
Barnaby Rudge |
