| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: chiefly mattered that I should succeed in looking entirely
unastonished. All I at first saw was the big gold bar crossing
each of her lenses, over which something convex and grotesque, like
the eyes of a large insect, something that now represented her
whole personality, seemed, as out of the orifice of a prison, to
strain forward and press. The face had shrunk away: it looked
smaller, appeared even to look plain; it was at all events, so far
as the effect on a spectator was concerned, wholly sacrificed to
this huge apparatus of sight. There was no smile in it, and she
made no motion to take my offered hand.
"I had no idea you were down here!" I said and I wondered whether
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: realised, wondered at, and admired, in her passionate
tranquillity of mind, before which everything mean and trivial
and temporary caught fire and burnt away in smoke. Her body was
never without suffering, or her heart without conflict; but
neither the body's weakness nor the heart's violence could
disturb that fixed contemplation, as of Buddha on his
lotus-throne.
And along with this wisdom, as of age or of the age of a race,
there was what I can hardly call less than an agony of sensation.
Pain or pleasure transported her, and the whole of pain or
pleasure might be held in a flower's cup or the imagined frown of
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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 The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: off.
"Yes!" cried De Marsay, furious at the thought of losing a piece of
good fortune which had been promised him.
He saw, moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave whose
obedience was as blind as the hangman's. Nor was it this passive
instrument upon whom his anger could fall.
The mulatto whistled, the carriage returned. Henri got in hastily.
Already a few curious onlookers had assembled like sheep on the
boulevard. Henri was strong; he tried to play the mulatto. When the
carriage started at a gallop he seized his hands, in order to master
him, and retain, by subduing his attendant, the possession of his
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: the danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or
of extinguishing their names if they have too few,--a singular result
of the Code which Napoleon never thought of. By a curious turn of
fortune Clementine became, in spite of her father having squandered
his substance on Florine (one of the most charming actresses in
Paris), a great heiress. The Marquis de Ronquerolles, a clever
diplomatist under the new dynasty, his sister, Madame de Serizy, and
the Chevalier du Rouvre agreed, in order to save their fortunes from
the dissipations of the marquis, to settle them on their niece, to
whom, moreover, they each pledged themselves to pay ten thousand
francs a year from the day of her marriage.
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