| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: kingdom, excepting one city, by which the affairs of a certain
prince in the alliance will take a better face.
May, against common conjectures, will be no very busy month in
Europe, but very signal for the death of the Dauphin, which will
happen on the 7th, after a short fit of sickness, and grievous
torments with the strangury. He dies less lamented by the court
than the kingdom.
On the 9th a Mareschal of France will break his leg by a fall
from his horse. I have not been able to discover whether he will
then die or not.
On the 11th will begin a most important siege, which the eyes of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: littered the writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open
warming-pan lay on the floor before the grate; a bath, still full of
mineral water had not been taken away. The sense of coming dissolution
pervaded all the details of an unsightly chaos. Signs of death
appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer came to the body on
the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the daylight, the
Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom in the
dismal chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the life
in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes. The
livid whiteness of his face was something horrible to see, enhanced as
it was by the long dank locks of hair that straggled along his cheeks,
Gobseck |
