| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: know if it was the right size for the packages she wrapped up in it;
but now, suddenly, converted to a worship of the press by the ardor of
her sisterly love, she stood behind Thuillier and re-read, over his
shoulder, the more striking passages of the page she thought so
eloquent, pointing her finger to them.
"Yes," said Thuillier, folding up the paper, "that's warm, and very
flattering to me. But here's another matter! Monsieur has come to tell
me that he refuses to plead for me, and renounces all claim to
Celeste's hand."
"That is to say," said Brigitte, "he renounces her if, after having
pleaded, the marriage does not take place 'subito.' Well, poor fellow,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: extravagances of hers a keener observer surely would have seen the
broken fragments of a magnificent edifice that had crumbled into ruin
before it was completed, the stones of a heavenly Jerusalem--love, in
short, without a lover. And this was indeed the fact.
The story of the first eighteen years of Mme. de Bargeton's married
life can be summed up in a few words. For a long while she lived upon
herself and distant hopes. Then, when she began to see that their
narrow income put the longed-for life in Paris quite out of the
question, she looked about her at the people with whom her life must
be spent, and shuddered at her loneliness. There was not a single man
who could inspire the madness to which women are prone when they
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.
He was going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he
came back he would be another man. The actual state of his mind--
his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion
that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--
lay quite out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his
behavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil
seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on
any active friendship between them. Their young delight in speaking
to each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,
was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For this
Middlemarch |
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 The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: world. To lose that for the sake of a few birds--CA SERA B'EN DE
VALEUR! Besides, it is impossible. The lighthouse is coming,
certain."
Fortin was right, of course. But Thibault's position was not
altogether unnatural, nor unfamiliar. All over the world, for the
past hundred years, people have been kicking against the sharpness
of the pricks that drove them forward out of the old life, the wild
life, the free life, grown dear to them because it was so easy.
There has been a terrible interference with bird-nesting and other
things. All over the world the great Something that bridges rivers,
and tunnels mountains, and fells forests, and populates deserts, and
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