| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: by emotions of sorrow, and now wearied with the rush of excessive joy.
Decrees of rehabilitation are so rare in the bankrupt court of Paris
that seldom more than one is granted in ten years.
To those persons who take society in its serious aspects, the
paraphernalia of justice has a grand and solemn character difficult
perhaps to define. Institutions depend altogether on the feelings with
which men view them and the degree of grandeur which men's thoughts
attach to them. When there is no longer, we will not say religion, but
belief among the people, whenever early education has loosened all
conservative bonds by accustoming youth to the practice of pitiless
analysis, a nation will be found in process of dissolution; for it
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: recalled the instructions which had been given to him
at Moscow -- to cross Siberia incognito, to arrive at
Irkutsk, but not to sacrifice success to the rapidity of the
journey; and consequently it was necessary that he should
husband the sole means of transport which remained to
him.
On the morrow, Michael Strogoff left Elamsk at the
moment when the first Tartar scouts were signaled ten
versts behind upon the road to the Baraba, and he plunged
again into the swampy region. The road was level, which
made it easy, but very tortuous, and therefore long. It
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