| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: take advantage of this document.
"In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
affection for me.
"And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: against the frame of the sledge but silently covered both
sledge and horse deeper and deeper, and neither the horse's
movements nor his breathing were any longer to be heard.
'He must have frozen too,' thought Nikita of Mukhorty, and
indeed those hoof knocks against the sledge, which had awakened
Nikita, were the last efforts the already numbed Mukhorty had
made to keep on his feet before dying.
'O Lord God, it seems Thou art calling me too!' said Nikita.
'Thy Holy Will be done. But it's uncanny. . . . Still, a man
can't die twice and must die once. If only it would come
soon!'
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: crew refusing duty after a month of weary battling with the gales
of the North Atlantic. Books are an integral part of one's life,
and my Shakespearian associations are with that first year of our
bereavement, the last I spent with my father in exile (he sent me
away to Poland to my mother's brother directly he could brace
himself up for the separation), and with the year of hard gales,
the year in which I came nearest to death at sea, first by water
and then by fire.
Those things I remember, but what I was reading the day before my
writing life began I have forgotten. I have only a vague notion
that it might have been one of Trollope's political novels. And
A Personal Record |
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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: "Indeed, you can still live, if you choose!" said her mother in a
whisper.
At this gay festival, amid these glorious creations produced by the
resources of nature only, nothing seemed likely to wound Veronique,
and yet it was here and now that she received her death-blow.
The party were to return about nine o'clock by way of the meadows, the
road through which, as lovely as an English or an Italian road, was
the pride of its engineer. The abundance of small stones, laid aside
when the plain was cleared, enabled him to keep it in good order; in
fact, for the last five years it was, in a way, macadamized. Carriages
were awaiting the company at the opening of the last valley toward the
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