| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: over, and fell over her fevered cheeks; then a deep sigh escaped
between her lips. The sudden joy of finding the father's spirit in the
son, who had grown all at once to be a man, almost killed her.
"Angel of heaven," she cried, weeping, "by one word you have effaced
all my sorrows. Ah! I can bear them.--This is my son," she said, "I
bore, I reared this man," and she raised her hands above her, and
clasped them as if in ecstasy, then she lay back on the pillow.
"Mother, your face is growing pale!" cried the lad.
"Some one must go for a priest," she answered, with a dying voice.
Louis wakened Annette, and the terrified old woman hurried to the
parsonage at Saint-Cyr.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: The Law is a civil and a spiritual prison. And such it should be. For that
the Law is intended. Only the confinement in the prison of the Law must
not be unduly prolonged. It must come to an end. The freedom of faith
must succeed the imprisonment of the Law.
Happy the person who knows how to utilize the Law so that it serves the
purposes of grace and of faith. Unbelievers are ignorant of this happy
knowledge. When Cain was first shut up in the prison of the Law he felt
no pang at the fratricide he had committed. He thought he could pass it off
as an incident with a shrug of the shoulder. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
he answered God flippantly. But when he heard the ominous words,
"What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me
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