| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then,
and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear
any harm when you have only to guard the common council and live under
the protection of the Chapter! Their Reverences the Canons would lay
the whole bishopric under an interdict if Jacqueline brought a
complaint of the smallest damage."
As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and took him by the
arm.
"Come with me," she added, pulling him up and out on to the steps.
When they were down by the water in their little garden, Jacqueline
looked saucily in her husband's face.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: slender columns, fretted into flower forms and trefoil by fine
filigree work of carved stone. A dome of glass at the end of the choir
sparkled as if it had been built of precious stones set cunningly. In
contrast to the roof with its alternating spaces of whiteness and
color, the two aisles lay to right and left in shadow so deep that the
faint gray outlines of their hundred shafts were scarcely visible in
the gloom. I gazed at the marvelous arcades, the scroll-work, the
garlands, the curving lines, and arabesques interwoven and interlaced,
and strangely lighted, until by sheer dint of gazing my perceptions
became confused, and I stood upon the borderland between illusion and
reality, taken in the snare set for the eyes, and almost light-headed
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