| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: have licked up the mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of
a Navarreins, a Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d'Espard, a
Vandenesse, a Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the
Bonaparte family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself
trumpeted in the faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his
friends, who offered his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune
in return for an alliance with some great family.
After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for
the general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,--
that of the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Here are cool springs, soft mead and grove, Lycoris;
Here might our lives with time have worn away.
But me mad love of the stern war-god holds
Armed amid weapons and opposing foes.
Whilst thou- Ah! might I but believe it not!-
Alone without me, and from home afar,
Look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.
Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp
And jagged ice not wound thy tender feet!
I will depart, re-tune the songs I framed
In verse Chalcidian to the oaten reed
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