| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: slippers, and eat the pate I made for Monsieur Auguste? They may
guillotine me if I--"
"Brigitte!" cried Madame de Dey.
Brigitte was mute.
"Hush!" said her husband in her ear, "do you want to kill madame?"
At that moment the recruit made a noise in the room above by sitting
down to his supper.
"I cannot stay here!" cried Madame de Dey. "I will go into the
greenhouse; there I can hear what happens outside during the night."
She still floated between the fear of having lost her son and the hope
of his suddenly appearing.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: "For my blue-and-gold suit, which has disappeared, and in
the place of which I could find nothing but this; and I was
even obliged to economize from compulsion, in order to get
possession of it."
"Indeed?"
"It is singular you should be astonished at that, since you
leave me without any money."
"At all events, here you are, and that is the principal
thing."
"By the most horrible roads."
"Where are you lodging?"
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: mixed society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus,
or shocking that of her own friends.
Then about thirty-eight years of age, she still preserved, not the
fresh plump beauty which distinguishes the daughters of Lower
Normandy, but a fragile and, so to speak, aristocratic beauty. Her
features were delicate and refined, her figure supple and easy. When
she spoke, her pale face lighted and seemed to acquire fresh life. Her
large dark eyes were full of affability and kindness, and yet their
calm, religious expression seemed to say that the springs of her
existence were no longer in her.
Married in the flower of her age to an old and jealous soldier, the
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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 St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'You cannot deceive me!' he cried. 'You have served under him.
You are a Frenchman! I hold by the hand, at last, one of that
noble race, the pioneers of the glorious principles of liberty and
brotherhood. Hush! No, it is all right. I thought there had been
somebody at the door. In this wretched, enslaved country we dare
not even call our souls our own. The spy and the hangman, sir -
the spy and the hangman! And yet there is a candle burning, too.
The good leaven is working, sir - working underneath. Even in this
town there are a few brave spirits, who meet every Wednesday. You
must stay over a day or so, and join us. We do not use this house.
Another, and a quieter. They draw fine ale, however - fair, mild
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