| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: long. Its wheels spun with such velocity that they could scarce be
seen. For the rest, the machine left behind it neither smoke nor
scent.
As for the driver, hidden in the interior of his machine, he had been
quite invisible. He remained as unknown as when he had first appeared
on the various roads throughout the country.
Milwaukee was promptly warned of the coming of this interloper. Fancy
the excitement the news caused! The immediate purpose agreed upon was
to stop this projectile, to erect across its route an obstacle
against which it would smash into a thousand pieces. But was there
time? Would not the machine appear at any moment? And what need was
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: proceedings that Madame de Dey had not yet been able to judge him.
But, disregarding the danger that attends all attempts at subtilty
with Normans, she employed the inventive wit and slyness which Nature
grants to women in opposing the four rivals one against the other. By
thus gaining time, she hoped to come safe and sound to the end of the
national troubles. At this period, the royalists in the interior of
France expected day by day that the Revolution would be ended on the
morrow. This conviction was the ruin of very many of them.
In spite of these difficulties, the countess had maintained her
independence very cleverly until the day when, by an inexplicable
imprudence, she closed her doors to her usual evening visitors. Madame
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: no sound, no fault, and another of the things about which he had
made up his mind was that she had no fortune. Always black-robed,
she must have had a succession of sorrows. People weren't poor,
after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they were positively
rich when they had had so much to give up. But the air of this
devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any attitude, a
beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom that she
had known more kinds of trouble than one.
He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but
occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday
afternoons, it used to come back to him that there were glories.
|
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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is
necessary to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see
what he is now; and he has done something that none of us has managed
to do (I am not speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead
of enemies. In fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless
you rake the sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an
assistant in a perfumer's shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further
back than 1814."
"Tut, tut, tut!" said Bixiou, "do not think of comparing Nucingen with
a little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through
his sense of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time
|
