| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: excellent reasons for justifying the opinion of our neighbors. A
young fellow, apparently in somewhat better circumstances, who
came to take the seat beside me from preference, listened to my
reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An approximate nearness of
age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh
air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach
was lumbering along,--these things, together with an
indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of
those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with
the more complacency because the intercourse is by its very
nature transient, and makes no implicit demands upon the future.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: which have gone astray; that is what it sought in facts,
that is what it sketched out in minds.
Efforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts!
These doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseen
necessity for the statesman to take philosophers into account,
confused evidences of which we catch a glimpse, a new system
of politics to be created, which shall be in accord with the old
world without too much disaccord with the new revolutionary ideal,
a situation in which it became necessary to use Lafayette to
defend Polignac, the intuition of progress transparent beneath
the revolt, the chambers and streets, the competitions to be
Les Miserables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: /you/ one hundred and thirty-three thousand francs."
Madame Cesar listened with fluctuations of joy which made her tremble
so violently that Popinot could hear the beating of her heart.
"Well, I have always considered Monsieur Birotteau as my partner," he
went on; "we can use this sum to pay his creditors in full. Add the
twenty-eight thousand you have saved and placed in our uncle
Pillerault's hands, and we have one hundred and sixty-one thousand
francs. Our uncle will not refuse his receipt for his own claim of
twenty-five thousand. No human power can deprive me of the right of
lending to my father-in-law, by anticipating our profits of next year,
the necessary sum to make up the total amount due to his creditor, and
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: there was not a trace of powder on the collar of her dress. The
extreme plainness of her dress lent an air of austerity to her face,
and her features were proud and grave. The manners and habits of
people of condition were so different from those of other classes in
former times that a noble was easily known, and the shopkeeper's wife
felt persuaded that her customer was a ci-devant, and that she had
been about the Court.
"Madame," she began with involuntary respect, forgetting that the
title was proscribed.
But the old lady made no answer. She was staring fixedly at the shop
windows as though some dreadful thing had taken shape against the
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