| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: expression to the only need for gratitude that ever filled my
heart, to quench a fire that burns in me to this day.
"Bourgeat, my second father, died in my arms," Desplein went on,
after a pause, visibly moved. "He left me everything he possessed
by a will he had had made by a public scrivener, dating from the
year when we had gone to live in the Cour de Rohan.
"This man's faith was perfect; he loved the Holy Virgin as he
might have loved his wife. He was an ardent Catholic, but never
said a word to me about my want of religion. When he was dying he
entreated me to spare no expense that he might have every
possible benefit of clergy. I had a mass said for him every day.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: secret confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of criminals have not
yet become disentangled from the old pictures of torture chambers, of
the unhealthiness of a prison, the chill of stone walls sweating
tears, the coarseness of the jailers and of the food--inevitable
accessories of the drama; but it is not unnecessary to explain here
that these exaggerations exist only on the stage, and only make
lawyers and judges smile, as well as those who visit prisons out of
curiosity, or who come to study them.
For a long time, no doubt, they were terrible. In the days of the old
Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the accused were, no doubt,
flung pell-mell into a low room underneath the old gateway. The
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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 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: having seen the beginning and end of all of them,
and her present owners finding she was of but little
value, her frame already racked with the pains of old
age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her
once active limbs, they took her to the woods, built
her a little hut, put up a little mud-chimney, and
then made her welcome to the privilege of support-
ing herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually
turning her out to die! If my poor old grandmother
now lives, she lives to suffer in utter loneliness; she
lives to remember and mourn over the loss of chil-
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'
IX
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