| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: dumfounded and quaking with fright.
Once outside in the street, she started away at a quick walk; but her
strength soon failed her. She heard the sound of the snow crunching
under a heavy step, and knew that the pitiless spy was on her track.
She was obliged to stop. He stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or
lack of intelligence, she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She
went slowly on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that he
could still keep her in sight. He might have been her very shadow.
Nine o'clock struck as the silent man and woman passed again by the
Church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of things that calm must
succeed to violent agitation, even in the weakest soul; for if feeling
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: money I must have, and the only chance I see is Bent Pitman. Bent
Pitman is a criminal, and therefore his position's weak. He must
have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I'll force him to
go shares; and even if he hasn't, I'll tell him the tontine
affair, and with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it'll be
strange if I don't succeed.'
Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by
advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to
ask a meeting? on what grounds? and where? Not at John Street,
for it would never do to let a man like Bent Pitman know your
real address; nor yet at Pitman's house, some dreadful place in
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