| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: is life, that is! I shall die in that harness, like old Chevrel, but
taking it easy now, all the same."
In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely looked
at his assistant, who was weeping copiously. "Why, Joseph, my poor
boy, what is the matter?"
"Oh, I love her so! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart fails me; I
believe----"
"Well, well, boy," said the old man, touched, "you are happier than
you know, by God! For she loves you. I know it."
And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the young man.
"Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!" exclaimed Joseph
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: lithographic blocks, from which an indefinite number of copies can be
drawn by criticism,--the proofs being more or less like us according
to a distribution of shading which is so nearly imperceptible that our
reputation depends (barring the calumnies of friends and the
witticisms of newspapers) on the balance struck by our criticisers
between Truth that limps and Falsehood to which Parisian wit gives
wings.
Madame Firmiani, like other noble and dignified women who make their
hearts a sanctuary and disdain the world, was liable, therefore, to be
totally misjudged by Monsieur de Bourbonne, an old country magnate,
who had reason to think a great deal about her during the winter of
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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 The Odyssey by Homer: more showed promise of seed to Helen, from the day that she
bare a lovely child, Hermione, as fair as golden Aphrodite.
So they were feasting through the great vaulted hall, the
neighbours and the kinsmen of renowned Menelaus, making
merry; and among them a divine minstrel was singing to the
lyre, and as he began the song two tumblers in the company
whirled through the midst of them.
{* A son of sorrow: Tristram.}
Meanwhile those twain, the hero Telemachus and the splendid
son of Nestor, made halt at the entry of the gate, they and
their horses. And the lord Eteoneus came forth and saw
The Odyssey |
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 Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted
corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed
into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight
once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great
fading bloodroot leaves.
I could see that she was trying to keep pace with the old
captain's lighter steps. He looked like an aged grasshopper of
some strange human variety. Behind this pair was a short,
impatient, little person, who kept the captain's house, and gave it
what Mrs. Todd and others believed to be no proper sort of care.
She was usually called "that Mari' Harris" in subdued conversation
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