| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: celebrated Carabine, whose lively wit and cavalier manners and
shameless brilliancy were a counterpoise to the dulness of domestic
life, and the toils of finance and politics.
Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not at home, supper was
served, and splendidly served, for ten persons every day. Artists, men
of letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there
when they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of
both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in
gold,--namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous
untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so
difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is
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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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: noise. "Yeep--eyeep--yeep." Ah, what was it crying, so weak and forlorn?
If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody
for them to marry. There had been father's Anglo-Indian friends before he
quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a single
man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they'd met them,
how could they have got to know men well enough to be more than strangers?
One read of people having adventures, being followed, and so on. But
nobody had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes, there had been one
year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their boarding-house who had put a
note on the jug of hot water outside their bedroom door! But by the time
Connie had found it the steam had made the writing too faint to read; they
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