| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: many foiks call I must have the whole flat. Now off you go, off you
go!"
Mme Maloir was for finishing the game, but Zoe looked as if she was
going to pounce down on the cards, and so she decided to carry them
off without in any way altering their positions, while Mme Lerat
undertook the removal of the brandy bottle, the glasses and the
sugar. Then they both scudded to the kitchen, where they installed
themselves at the table in an empty space between the dishcloths,
which were spread out to dry, and the bowl still full of dishwater.
"We said it was three hundred and forty. It's your turn."
"I play hearts."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: you or I will say that we have no right to blame ignorance thus rashly,
unless we can add what ignorance we mean and of what, and also to whom and
how it is respectively a good or an evil?
ALCIBIADES: How do you mean? Can ignorance possibly be better than
knowledge for any person in any conceivable case?
SOCRATES: So I believe:--you do not think so?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And yet surely I may not suppose that you would ever wish to act
towards your mother as they say that Orestes and Alcmeon and others have
done towards their parent.
ALCIBIADES: Good words, Socrates, prithee.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: The vivid embers, red and clear,
Proclaim a frosty night.
Books, varied, on the table lie,
Three children o'er them bend,
And all, with curious, eager eye,
The turning leaf attend.
Picture and tale alternately
Their simple hearts delight,
And interest deep, and tempered glee,
Illume their aspects bright.
The parents, from their fireside place,
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not
so young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.
At eight o'clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her
daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding
a handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn
with the torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large
gilt picture-frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to
the wreck with a gesture of deep despair.
"I don't know that the loss is very great!" cried the old mistress of
the Cat and Racket. "It was like you, no doubt; but I am told that
there is a man on the boulevard who paints lovely portraits for fifty
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