| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: MRS. CHEVELEY. Your old friend - and mine.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Who?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Baron Arnheim.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Frowning.] Ah! yes. I remember hearing, at
the time of his death, that he had been mixed up in the whole affair.
MRS. CHEVELEY. It was his last romance. His last but one, to do him
justice.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Rising.] But you have not seen my Corots yet.
They are in the music-room. Corots seem to go with music, don't
they? May I show them to you?
MRS. CHEVELEY. [Shaking her head.] I am not in a mood to-night for
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good investment, even in the
purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this bazaar, where splendor
revealed the owner's want of occupation, Sommervieux's famous picture
filled the place of honor, and in it Monsieur and Madame Guillaume
found their chief consolation, turning their eyes, harnessed with eye-
glasses, twenty times a day on this presentment of their past life, to
them so active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion and these
rooms, where everything had an aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the
spectacle offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a
rock far from the world and the ideas which are life, startled
Augustine; she could here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added:
"Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner."
The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and
shame, for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship
with crime as a dishonour.
"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had
immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more
keenly by her husband.
"There was the money in the pit," he continued--"all the
weaver's money. Everything's been gathered up, and they're taking
the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was
Silas Marner |
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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: of the Virgin, if God and the saints will restore to me the affection
of my son, the Duc de Nivron, here present."
He remained on his knees in deep humility with clasped hands, praying.
Finding that his son, the hope of his name, still did not come to him,
great tears rose in his eyes, dry so long, and rolled down his
withered cheeks. At this moment, Etienne, hearing no further sounds,
glided to the opening of his grotto like a young adder craving the
sun. He saw the tears of the stricken old man, he recognized the signs
of a true grief, and, seizing his father's hand, he kissed him, saying
in the voice of an angel:--
"Oh, mother! forgive me!"
|
