| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: gates. She did not hesitate even to tell him of her success in an
attempt to befool and seduce Eutyches the denunciator.
"And why should I not?" she said; "it cost me nothing. For thee, my
lord, have I not done more than that? Did I not even abandon my
child?"
After her divorce from Philip, she had indeed left her daughter in
Rome, hoping that, as the wife of the tetrarch, she might bear other
children. Until that moment she had never spoken to Antipas of her
daughter. He asked himself the reason for this sudden display of
tenderness.
During their brief conversation several attendants had come out upon
Herodias |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt,
would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he
did what he could. No service was too humble for him to
perform in the aid of the South, no adventure to perilous for
him to undertake if consistent with the character of a
civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith
and without too much qualification assented to at least a
part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in
love and war.
One evening while Fahrquhar and his wife were sitting on a
rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
