| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: as I can recall. Any further impressions belong wholly to the
domain of phantasmagoria delirium. Dream, madness, and memory
merged wildly together in a series of fantastic, fragmentary delusions
which can have no relation to anything real.
There was a hideous
fall through incalculable leagues of viscous, sentient darkness,
and a babel of noises utterly alien to all that we know of the
earth and its organic life. Dormant, rudimentary senses seemed
to start into vitality within me, telling of pits and voids peopled
by floating horrors and leading to sunless crags and oceans and
teeming cities of windowless, basalt towers upon which no light
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: Desiree's assertions. His eyes were human and easily read; they
held jealousy; and when power is jealous there is danger.
But Desiree proved herself equal to the occasion. She
remained seated on the granite couch for a long minute without
moving; confusion left her eyes as she gazed at us apparently with
the utmost composure; but I who knew her could see that her brain
was working with the rapidity of lightning. Then her glance passed
to the figure at the doorway, and with a gesture commanding and
truly royal in its simplicity, she held her hand forth, palm down,
to the Inca king.
Like an obedient trained monkey he trotted across the
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: which, indeed, under various conditions, every masterpiece is
engendered. The artist only bent his head in reply.
"How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back
from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the
Salon," the great painter went on. "You see, these two works will not
be appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet
be understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The
pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do
better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more
glory to be looked for there than from our luckless canvases!"
Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately
refused.
When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer,
whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased,
or because Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on
the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On
making this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy rather
than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He
determined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the Royal
Treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the
number of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient
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