| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: Whenever the old man swore that oath the rafters trembled.
"Holy Virgin! Madame is turning pale," cried Nanon.
"Grandet, your anger will kill me," said the poor mother.
"Ta, ta, ta, ta! nonsense; you never die in your family! Eugenie, what
have you done with your gold?" he cried, rushing upon her.
"Monsieur," said the daughter, falling at Madame Grandet's knees, "my
mother is ill. Look at her; do not kill her."
Grandet was frightened by the pallor which overspread his wife's face,
usually so yellow.
"Nanon, help me to bed," said the poor woman in a feeble voice; "I am
dying--"
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: do lay it out."
"They bore me to death," her companion pursued with slightly more
temperance.
But this was going too far. "Ah that's because you've no
sympathy!"
The girl gave an ironic laugh, only retorting that nobody could
have any who had to count all day all the words in the dictionary;
a contention Mrs. Jordan quite granted, the more that she shuddered
at the notion of ever failing of the very gift to which she owed
the vogue--the rage she might call it--that had caught her up.
Without sympathy--or without imagination, for it came back again to
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