| 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: his superiors. His health having seriously failed him during the last
year, it seemed probable that he would soon be raised to the office of
vicar-general of the archbishopric. His competitors themselves desired
the appointment, so that their own plans might have time to mature
during the few remaining days which a malady, now become chronic,
might allow him. Far from offering the same hopes to rivals,
Birotteau's triple chin showed to all who wanted his coveted canonry
an evidence of the soundest health; even his gout seemed to them, in
accordance with the proverb, an assurance of longevity.
The Abbe Chapeloud, a man of great good sense, whose amiability had
made the leaders of the diocese and the members of the best society in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: have reached Pisgah's slope and in increasing numbers men and women
are pressing on to see if it be really the Promised Land."
"Pisgah--the Promised Land!" Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as
if he were half-way to "Oh! Beulah Land!" and the tambourine.
That "larger spirit," we maintain, is God; those "impulses" are the
power of God, and Mr. McCabe serves a Master he denies. He has but
to realise fully that God is not necessarily the Triune God of the
Catholic Church, and banish his intense suspicion that he may yet be
lured back to that altar he abandoned, he has but to look up from
that preoccupation, and immediately he will begin to realise the
presence of Divinity.
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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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: you ought not to put off the accomplishment of so important a duty."
"But is Veronique willing to be married?" asked the old man, startled.
"As you please, father," she said, lowering her eyes.
"Yes, we'll marry her!" cried stout Madame Sauviat, smiling.
"Why didn't you speak to me about it before I went to Paris, mother?"
said Sauviat. "I shall have to go back there."
Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat, a man in whose eyes money seemed to
constitute the whole of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had
never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property
to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich
bourgeois,--so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain
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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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and
stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given
his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the
old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a
common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At
Juana's age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround
youth. A poet of our day has said: "Woman succumbs only to her own
nobility. The lover pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the
moment when he is most beloved; the young girl, confident and proud,
longs to make sacrifices to prove her love, and knows the world and
men too little to continue calm in the midst of her rising emotions
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