| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: no doubt the accusation came from Milady, "a woman branded by the
justice of the country; a woman who has espoused one man in France and
another in England; a woman who poisoned her second husband and who
attempted both to poison and assassinate me!"
"What do you say, monsieur?" cried the cardinal, astonished; "and of
what woman are you speaking thus?"
"Of Milady de Winter," replied D'Artagnan, "yes, of Milady de Winter, of
whose crimes your Eminence is doubtless ignorant, since you have honored
her with your confidence."
"Monsieur," said the cardinal, "if Milady de Winter has committed the
crimes you lay to her charge, she shall be punished."
The Three Musketeers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: For mine he is, more than a common foe,
By challenge new and promise old also."
VI
"Descend," the fierce Circassian gan reply,
"Alone, or all this troop for succor take
To deserts waste, or place frequented high,
For vantage none I will the fight forsake:"
Thus given and taken was the bold defy,
And through the press, agreed so, they brake,
Their hatred made them one, and as they went,
Each knight his foe did for despite defend:
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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 Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: what would go against her. I told her that I had met the Uxbridge
carriage.
"One of them is in New York; how else could they be giving me
trouble just now?"
"There was a gentleman on horseback beside the carriage."
"Did he look mean and cunning?"
"He did not wear his legal beaver up, I think; but he rode a fine
horse and sat it well."
"A lawyer on horseback should, like the beggar of the adage, ride
to the devil."
"Your business now is the 'Lemorne?'"
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: oft-times wondered, that my father, tho' I believe he had his reasons for
it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course, when I
was a boy,--should never once endeavour to account for them in this way:
for all the Shandy Family were of an original character throughout:--I mean
the males,--the females had no character at all,--except, indeed, my great
aunt Dinah, who, about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by
the coachman, for which my father, according to his hypothesis of christian
names, would often say, She might thank her godfathers and godmothers.
It will seem strange,--and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle in
the reader's way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing
how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after
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