| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: perhaps. The hope of causing you a regret will soothe my agony,
and that thought shall be the sole revenge of a slighted
heart. . . ."
Only those who have passed through all the exceeding tribulations of
youth, who have seized on all the chimeras with two white pinions, the
nightmare fancies at the disposal of a fervid imagination, can realize
the horrors that seized upon Gaston de Nueil when he had reason to
suppose that his ultimatum was in Mme. de Beauseant's hands. He saw
the Vicomtesse, wholly untouched, laughing at his letter and his love,
as those can laugh who have ceased to believe in love. He could have
wished to have his letter back again. It was an absurd letter. There
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: of his heart. Smothered sounds as he came nearer the chateau told him
that the servants must be at supper, and he went straight to Mme. de
Beauseant's room.
Mme. de Beauseant never left her bedroom. M. de Nueil could gain the
doorway without making the slightest sound. There, by the light of two
wax candles, he saw the thin, white Marquise in a great armchair; her
head was bowed, her hands hung listlessly, her eyes gazing fixedly at
some object which she did not seem to see. Her whole attitude spoke of
hopeless pain. There was a vague something like hope in her bearing,
but it was impossible to say whither Claire de Bourgogne was looking--
forwards to the tomb or backwards into the past. Perhaps M. de Nueil's
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him; and then
the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger
begins packing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where he
sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is
lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long
before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom.
Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a
knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him,
motionless and blest. (19)
There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but
touch, before you go, one of those little red mouths which peep out
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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 The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: all the time, only to-night happens to be the annual something or
other, and - " he trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my
belt around him. "A good six inches," he sighed. "I never get
into a hansom cab any more that I don't expect to see the horse fly
up into the air. Well, Allie isn't going either. She turned down
Granger this afternoon, the Annapolis fellow you met on the stairs,
pigeon-breasted chap - and she always gets a headache on those
occasions.
He got up heavily and went to the door. "Granger is leaving," he
said, "I may be able to get his dinner coat for you. How well do
you know her?" he asked, with his hand on the knob.
The Man in Lower Ten |
