| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: advance of the clock of the cathedral. He could make no remark. Had he
uttered his suspicion it would only have caused and apparently
justified one of those fierce and eloquent expositions to which
Mademoiselle Gamard, like other women of her class, knew very well how
to give vent in particular cases. The thousand and one annoyances
which a servant will sometimes make her master bear, or a woman her
husband, were instinctively divined by Mademoiselle Gamard and used
upon Birotteau. The way in which she delighted in plotting against the
poor vicar's domestic comfort bore all the marks of what we must call
a profoundly malignant genius. Yet she so managed that she was never,
so far as eye could see, in the wrong.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: well the perplexed loyalty with which she was now setting
herself to gather together some preservative and reassuring
evidences of this man who had always been; as she put it,
"never quite here." It was as if she felt that now it was at
last possible to make a definite reality of him. He could be
fixed. And as he was fixed he would stay. Never more would he
be able to come in and with an almost expressionless glance
wither the interpretation she had imposed upon him. She was
finding much comfort in this task of reconstruction. She had
gathered together in the drawingroom every presentable
portrait she had been able to find of him. He had never, she
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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 Lucile by Owen Meredith: Of the mockery round it, and shrinks from each thing
It once sought,--the poor idiot who pass'd for a king,
Hard by, with his squalid straw crown, now confess'd
A madman more painfully mad than the rest.--
So the sound of her voice, as it there wander'd o'er
His echoing heart, seem'd in part to restore
The forces of thought: he recaptured the whole
Of his life by the light which, in passing, her soul
Reflected on his: he appear'd to awake
From a dream, and perceived he had dream'd a mistake:
His spirit was soften'd, yet troubled in him:
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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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: wife's side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he
was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic
circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she
placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her
husband's eyes.
"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me!
Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single
imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it."
"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it
again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder."
Mosses From An Old Manse |
