| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: girl had run to her master's assistance in her night-gown, with bare
feet.
While the /procureur-du-roi/, the commissary of police, and the
examining magistrate were gathering all particulars for the basis of
their action, the luckless des Vanneaulx picked up the broken pots and
calculated from their capacity the sum lost. The magistrates admitted
the correctness of their calculations and entered the sum stolen on
their records as, in all probability, a thousand gold coins to each
pot. But were these coins forty-eight or forty, twenty-four or twenty
francs in value? All expectant heirs in Limoges sympathized with the
des Vanneaulx. The Limousin imagination was greatly stirred by the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: nurse lifted up her finger in the vaulted house.
"I hear a sound in the wind," said she, "that is like the sound of
piping."
"It is but a little sound," said the King's daughter, "but yet is
it sound enough for me."
So they went down in the dusk to the doors of the house, and along
the beach of the sea. And the waves beat upon the one hand, and
upon the other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the
sky, and the gulls flew widdershins. And when they came to that
part of the beach where strange things had been done in the ancient
ages, lo, there was the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.
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