| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: "Come and see me; my father has a fortune--"
"Ginevra," continued Laure, tenderly. "Madame Roguin and my mother are
coming to see Monsieur Servin to-morrow and reproach him; hadn't you
better warn him."
A thunderbolt falling at Ginevra's feet could not have astonished her
more than this revelation.
"What matter is it to them?" she asked, naively.
"Everybody thinks it very wrong. Mamma says it is immoral."
"And you, Laure, what do you say?"
The young girl looked up at Ginevra, and their thoughts united. Laure
could no longer keep back her tears; she flung herself on her friend's
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of
sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other
way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the
full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body,
but pain for the beautiful soul.
When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too
much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of
God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it
in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as
me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment,
but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet.
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