| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: advantages of salon royalty does not easily renounce them. Vanity is
the most tenacious of all habits.
Bonapartist, and afterwards a liberal--for, by the strangest of
metamorphoses, the soldiers of Napoleon became almost to a man
enamoured of the constitutional system--Colonel Giguet was, during the
Restoration, the natural president of the governing committee of
Arcis, which consisted of the notary Grevin, his son-in-law
Beauvisage, and Varlet junior, the chief physician of Arcis, brother-
in-law of Grevin, and a few other liberals.
"If our dear boy is not nominated," said Madame Marion, having first
looked into the antechamber and garden to make sure that no one
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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 Odyssey by Homer: with a bronze-shod spear between the shoulders, and drave
it out through the breast, and he fell with a crash and
struck the ground full with his forehead. Then Telemachus
sprang away, leaving the long spear fixed in Amphinomus,
for he greatly dreaded lest one of the Achaeans might run
upon him with his blade, and stab him as he drew forth the
spear, or smite him with a down stroke {*} of the sword. So
he started and ran and came quickly to his father, and
stood by him, and spake winged words:
{* Or, reading [Greek], smite him as he stooped over the
corpse.}
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: go. You are shivering! Don't, dear, don't. See, you
have Norah, and Max,and me to help you. We will put him
on his feet. Physically he is not what he should be. I can
do much for him."
"You!" I cried, and the humor of it was too exquisite
for laughter.
"For that I gave up Vienna," said Von Gerhard,
simply. "You, too, must do your share."
"My share! I have done my share. He was in the
gutter, and he was dragging me with him. When his
insanity came upon him I thanked God for it, and
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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 Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: but in pursuing his ultimate quest for the gods atop unknown Kadath,
and the marvellous sunset city they so strangely withheld from
his slumbers. Accordingly he spoke of these things to the ghoulish
leaders; telling what he knew of the cold waste wherein Kadath
stands and of the monstrous Shantaks and the mountains carven
into double-headed images which guard it. He spoke of the fear
of Shantaks for night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic
birds fly screaming from the black burrows high up on the gaunt
grey peaks that divide Inquanok from hateful Leng. He spoke, too,
of the things he had learned concerning night-gaunts from the
frescoes in the windowless monastery of the High-Priest Not To
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
