| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
mysterious as M. de San-Real's. No one can get into the house without
the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication
with other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a
word of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they
are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons--
could get the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall,
which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler
surrounded by lackeys, an old joker more savage and surly even than
the porter. If any one gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: Ful many a wonder doth this vice,
He can make of a wisman nyce,
And of a fool, that him schal seme
That he can al the lawe deme, 20
And yiven every juggement
Which longeth to the firmament
Bothe of the sterre and of the mone;
And thus he makth a gret clerk sone
Of him that is a lewed man.
Ther is nothing which he ne can,
Whil he hath Dronkeschipe on honde,
Confessio Amantis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: delicate and lovely; she had seemed like heliotrope, like a
tube-rose in her purity and her passion (who was it said, "No
heart is pure that is not passionate"?); and here was the end!
Nothing external could have placed her where she was, no
violence, no outrage, no evil of another's doing, could have
reached her real life without her own consent; and now what
kind of existence, what career, what possibility of happiness
remained? Why could not God in his mercy take her, and give
her to his holiest angels for schooling, ere it was yet too
late?
Hope went and sat by the window once more. Her thoughts still
|
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 Camille by Alexandre Dumas: volume. Manon died in the desert, it is true, but in the arms of
the man who loved her with the whole energy of his soul; who,
when she was dead, dug a grave for her, and watered it with his
tears, and buried his heart in it; while Marguerite, a sinner
like Manon, and perhaps converted like her, had died in a
sumptuous bed (it seemed, after what I had seen, the bed of her
past), but in that desert of the heart, a more barren, a vaster,
a more pitiless desert than that in which Manon had found her
last resting-place.
Marguerite, in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of
the last circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend
Camille |
