| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: house of Herouville was discarding its own glory. Incapable of anger
the gentle Jeanne de Saint-Savin could only bless and weep, but often
she raised her eyes to heaven, asking it to account for this singular
doom. Those eyes filled with tears when she thought that at her death
her cherished child would be wholly orphaned and left exposed to the
brutalities of a brother without faith or conscience.
Such emotions repressed, a first love unforgotten, so many sorrows
ignored and hidden within her,--for she kept her keenest sufferings
from her cherished child,--her joys embittered, her griefs unrelieved,
all these shocks had weakened the springs of life and were developing
in her system a slow consumption which day by day was gathering
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: when the entrance of Mrs. John Dashwood put an end to the
subject.
But though SHE never spoke of it out of her own family,
Elinor could see its influence on her mind, in the something
like confusion of countenance with which she entered,
and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour to herself.
She even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find
that Elinor and her sister were so soon to leave town,
as she had hoped to see more of them;--an exertion
in which her husband, who attended her into the room,
and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish
Sense and Sensibility |
