| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard
must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men,
which always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with
honest men!--in the neglect of precautions.
The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like
the faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: secretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with the duty of drawing
up the report, had confided to him that the said report would
assuredly be against him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement.
Gazonal, though commander of the National Guard in his own town and
one of the most capable manufacturers of the department, found himself
of so little account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened by
the costs of living and the dearness of even the most trifling things,
that he kept himself, all this time, secluded in his shabby lodgings.
The Southerner, deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he called
a manufactory of rheumatism. As he added up the costs of his suit and
his living, he vowed within himself to poison the prefect on his
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: more imperious, her need for him grow more acute and positive;
and day by day he felt that in his peculiar relation to her his
own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. His power
to minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link with
his brother's life. He understood all that his physical
resemblance meant to her. He knew that she sat by him always
watching for some common trick of gesture, some familiar play of
expression, some illusion of light and shadow, in which he should
seem wholly Adriance. He knew that she lived upon this and that
her disease fed upon it; that it sent shudders of remembrance
through her and that in the exhaustion which followed this
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
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 Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: The Elmer Fryes had been erased from Dunwich.
VIII.
In the
meantime a quieter yet even more spiritually poignant phase of
the horror had been blackly unwinding itself behind the closed
door of a shelf-lined room in Arkham. The curious manuscript record
or diary of Wilbur Whateley, delivered to Miskatonic University
for translation had caused much worry and bafflement among the
experts in language both ancient and modern; its very alphabet,
notwithstanding a general resemblance to the heavily-shaded Arabic
used in Mesopotamia, being absolutely unknown to any available
The Dunwich Horror |
