Today's Stichomancy for Matt Damon

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac:

Prefecture."

Peyrade and Carlos were now face to face in the coach. Carlos had a stiletto under his hand. The coach-driver was a man he could trust, quite capable of allowing Carlos to get out without seeing him, or being surprised, on arriving at his journey's end, to find a dead body in his cab. No inquiries are ever made about a spy. The law almost always leaves such murders unpunished, it is so difficult to know the rights of the case.

Peyrade looked with his keenest eye at the magistrate sent to examine him by the Prefet of Police. Carlos struck him as satisfactory: a bald head, deeply wrinkled at the back, and powdered hair; a pair of very

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato:

me?

With you, he said.

Thereupon I should answer to him who asked me, that justice is of the nature of the just: would not you?

Yes, he said.

And suppose that he went on to say: 'Well now, is there also such a thing as holiness?'--we should answer, 'Yes,' if I am not mistaken?

Yes, he said.

Which you would also acknowledge to be a thing--should we not say so?

He assented.

'And is this a sort of thing which is of the nature of the holy, or of the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tanach:

Isaiah 28: 23 Give ye ear, and hear my voice; attend, and hear my speech.

Isaiah 28: 24 Is the plowman never done with plowing to sow, with the opening and harrowing of his ground?

Isaiah 28: 25 When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the black cummin, and scatter the cummin, and put in the wheat in rows and the barley in the appointed place and the spelt in the border thereof?

Isaiah 28: 26 For He doth instruct him aright; his God doth teach him.

Isaiah 28: 27 For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing-sledge, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the black cummin is beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.

Isaiah 28: 28 Is bread corn crushed? Nay, he will not ever be threshing it; and though the roller of his wagon and its sharp edges move noisily, he doth not crush it.

Isaiah 28: 29 This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts: Wonderful is His counsel, and great His wisdom.

Isaiah 29: 1 Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add ye year to year, let the feasts come round!

Isaiah 29: 2 Then will I distress Ariel, and there shall be mourning and moaning; and she shall be unto Me as a hearth of God.

The Tanach

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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac:

monastic temper was the foundation of Madame de Granville's; she was now five-and-thirty, and looked forty. When the count was compelled by decency to speak to his wife or to dine at home, she was only too well pleased to inflict her company upon him, with her acid-sweet remarks and the intolerable dulness of her narrow-minded circle, and she tried to put him in the wrong before the servants and her charitable friends.

When, at this time, the post of President in a provincial court was offered to the Comte de Granville, who was in high favor, he begged to be allowed to remain in Paris. This refusal, of which the Keeper of the Seals alone knew the reasons, gave rise to extraordinary