| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near relationship and
constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of my
father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every
particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of ME
should make MY assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented
by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there
may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to
find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the
course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you,
"FITZWILLIAM DARCY"
Chapter 36
Pride and Prejudice |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: thought; "I'd better write." He asked for paper, an envelope, and
a stamp, and as he was sipping the cool, effervescent water he
considered what he should say. But his thoughts wandered, and he
could not manage to compose a letter.
My dear Nathalie,--I cannot go away with the heavy impression
that yesterday's talk with your husband has left," he began.
"What next? Shall I ask him to forgive me what I said yesterday?
But I only said what I felt, and he will think that I am taking
it back. Besides, this interference of his in my private matters.
. . No, I cannot," and again he felt hatred rising in his heart
towards that man so foreign to him. He folded the unfinished
Resurrection |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: nights and muffled tides and crowded chairs--I became aware both
that protection was wholly absent from her life and that she was
wholly indifferent to its absence. The odd thing was that she was
not appealing: she was abjectly, divinely conceited, absurdly
fantastically pleased. Her beauty was as yet all the world to her,
a world she had plenty to do to live in. Mrs. Meldrum told me more
about her, and there was nothing that, as the centre of a group of
giggling, nudging spectators, Flora wasn't ready to tell about
herself. She held her little court in the crowd, upon the grass,
playing her light over Jews and Gentiles, completely at ease in all
promiscuities. It was an effect of these things that from the very
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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 Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: nut-brown spencer over a coat of uncertain green, with white metal
buttons. A man in a spencer in the year 1844! it was as if Napoleon
himself had vouchsafed to come to life again for a couple of hours.
The spencer, as its name indicates, was the invention of an English
lord, vain, doubtless, of his handsome shape. Some time before the
Peace of Amiens, this nobleman solved the problem of covering the bust
without destroying the outlines of the figure and encumbering the
person with the hideous boxcoat, now finishing its career on the backs
of aged hackney cabmen; but, elegant figures being in the minority,
the success of the spencer was short-lived in France, English though
it was.
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