| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: the features of the "Black Gentleman."
"Oh, he has been working too hard!" was a reflection due to another
shade of expression which Caroline could discern.
The stranger, on his part, could guess when the girl had spent Sunday
in finishing a dress, and he felt an interest in the pattern. As
quarter-day came near he could see that her pretty face was clouded by
anxiety, and he could guess when Caroline had sat up late at work; but
above all, he noted how the gloomy thoughts that dimmed the cheerful
and delicate features of her young face gradually vanished by degrees
as their acquaintance ripened. When winter had killed the climbers and
plants of her window garden, and the window was kept closed, it was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: hopes are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful,
fitful - who will have disappeared to-morrow, who knows? to his
boorish pleasures!'
Any peg would do for Gondremark. 'The thing!' he cried, striking
his brow. 'Fool, not to have thought of it! Madam, without perhaps
knowing it, you have solved our problem.'
'What do you mean? Speak!' she said.
He appeared to collect himself; and then, with a smile, 'The
Prince,' he said, 'must go once more a-hunting.'
'Ay, if he would!' cried she, 'and stay there!'
'And stay there,' echoed the Baron. It was so significantly said,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: "Hey!" said Rogron; "didn't you take it easy!"
Pierrette opened her eyes wide, not comprehending.
"She is as stupid as an owl," said Sylvie to Mademoiselle Borain, the
best seamstress in Provins.
"She's so young," said the workwoman, looking kindly at Pierrette,
whose delicate little muzzle was turned up to her with a coaxing look.
Pierrette preferred the sewing-women to her relations. She was
endearing in her ways with them, she watched their work, and made them
those pretty speeches that seem like the flowers of childhood, and
which her cousin had already silenced, for that gaunt woman loved to
impress those under her with salutary awe. The sewing-women were
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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 The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: she was worn out with work. And all the time she was uneasy for
fear someone should eat a piece too much, or that her husband and
daughters-in-law would sit idle. At one time she would hear the
tavern-keeper's geese going at the back of the huts to her
kitchen-garden, and she would run out of the hut with a long
stick and spend half an hour screaming shrilly by her cabbages,
which were as gaunt and scraggy as herself; at another time she
fancied that a crow had designs on her chickens, and she rushed
to attack it wi th loud words of abuse. She was cross and
grumbling from morning till night. And often she raised such an
outcry that passers-by stopped in the street.
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