Today's Stichomancy for Napoleon Bonaparte

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde:

a view of Padua by moonlight: a staircase (R.C.) leads up to a door with a portiere of crimson velvet, with the Duke's arms embroidered in gold on it: on the lowest step of the staircase a figure draped in black is sitting: the hall is lit by an iron cresset filled with burning tow: thunder and lightning outside: the time is night.

[Enter GUIDO through the window.]

GUIDO

The wind is rising: how my ladder shook! I thought that every gust would break the cords! [Looks out at the city.]

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades:

suited with dramatic fitness to the past crimes of the victims, and had I to execute judgment on the criminal binders of certain precious volumes I have seen, where the untouched maiden sheets entrusted to their care have, by barbarous treatment, lost dignity, beauty and value, I would collect the paper shavings so ruthlessly shorn off, and roast the perpetrator of the outrage over their slow combustion. In olden times, before men had learned to value the relics of our printers, there was some excuse for the sins of a binder who erred from ignorance which was general; but in these times, when the historical and antiquarian value of old books is freely acknowledged, no quarter should be granted to a careless culprit.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp:

catch a glimpse of the stocking covering their ankles."

"But what--"

"Did you know that the morals of the German public are in such a shaky condition that a glimpse of that sort would be fatal to them? "

"But I don't see how a stocking--"

"With stripes round it," said Irais.

"And darns in it," I added.

--could possibly be pernicious? "

"'The Pernicious Stocking; or, Thoughts on the Ethics of Petticoats,'" said Irais. "Put <165> that down as the name of your next book on Germany."

"I never know," complained Minora, letting her note-book fall,

Elizabeth and her German Garden

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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne:

horse was concerned in it,--caballistical--and only partly musical;-- Obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,--he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met,--that Dr. Slop must have had three fifths of Job's patience at least to have unloosed them.--I think in my conscience, that had Nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in