| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: The Homeric laugh thus raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon
asked the reason of her success. Then began the FORTE of the gossip.
Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a
monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling
Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these
Parisian saturnalias were the result of them, etc., etc. Conducted by
the Chevalier de Valois, a most able leader of an orchestra of this
kind, the opening of the CANCAN was magnificent.
"I really don't know," he said, "what should hinder a du Bousquier
from marrying a Mademoiselle Suzanne What's-her-name. What IS her
name, do you know? Suzette! Though I have lodgings at Madame Lardot's,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career.
All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of youth
With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth
Grasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold
Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!
V.
Fairy gold! moss and leaves! and the young Fairy Bride?
Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?
Say, O friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch'd
Some pale and impalpable vapor, detach'd
From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall
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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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Even in an age the fiery steam of sun
Could not accomplish, however puissant he
With his hot coruscations: so much more
Agile and overpowering is this force.
. . . . . .
Now in what manner engendered are these things,
How fashioned of such impetuous strength
As to cleave towers asunder, and houses all
To overtopple, and to wrench apart
Timbers and beams, and heroes' monuments
To pile in ruins and upheave amain,
Of The Nature of Things |
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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: within sight of each other and heading different ways; but when, at
last, the breeze came with the darkling ripple that ran very blue
on a pale sea, they all went in the same direction together. For
this was the homeward-bound fleet from the far-off ends of the
earth, and a Falmouth fruit-schooner, the smallest of them all, was
heading the flight. One could have imagined her very fair, if not
divinely tall, leaving a scent of lemons and oranges in her wake.
The next day there were very few ships in sight from our mast-heads
- seven at most, perhaps, with a few more distant specks, hull
down, beyond the magic ring of the horizon. The spell of the fair
wind has a subtle power to scatter a white-winged company of ships
The Mirror of the Sea |
