| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: Beseeming daughters of great lords and kings --
She would herself be surgeon to her knight,
And heal him with her skill, or with her sight.
LXVIII
Thus would she cure her love, and cure her foe
She must, that had her friends and kinsfolk slain:
Some cursed weeds her cunning hand did know,
That could augment his harm, increase his pain;
But she abhorred to be revenged so,
No treason should her spotless person stain,
And virtueless she wished all herbs and charms
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed him that he
reeled as he walked, and stared about him like a drunken man.
"Miserable aristocrat! Do you want to have our heads cut off?" he
shouted furiously. "You just take to your heels and never show
yourself here again. Don't come to me for materials for your plots."
He tried, as he spoke, to take away the little box which she had
slipped into one of her pockets. But at the touch of a profane hand on
her clothes, the stranger recovered youth and activity for a moment,
preferring to face the dangers of the street with no protector save
God, to the loss of the thing she had just paid for. She sprang to the
door, flung it open, and disappeared, leaving the husband and wife
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