| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: him with her into the fields of hope and of futurity, where she loved
to hold him at her side.
VII
At this moment the town of Saumur was more excited about the dinner
given by Grandet to the Cruchots than it had been the night before at
the sale of his vintage, though that constituted a crime of high-
treason against the whole wine-growing community. If the politic old
miser had given his dinner from the same idea that cost the dog of
Alcibiades his tail, he might perhaps have been called a great man;
but the fact is, considering himself superior to a community which he
could trick on all occasions, he paid very little heed to what Saumur
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: party, and I passed it most pleasantly. . . . Your father writes
that on Friday he dined at Thiers' with Mignet, Cousin, Pontois, and
Lord Normanby. He says such a dinner is "unique in a man's life."
"Mignet is delightful, frank, open, gay, full of intelligence, and
of that grace which makes society charming." . . . Your father to-
day gives me some account of Thiers. He is now fifty: he rises at
five o'clock every morning, toils till twelve, breakfasts, makes
researches, and then goes to the Chambers. In the evening he always
receives his friends except Wednesdays and Thursdays, when he
attends his wife to the opera and to the Academie.
LETTER: To Mr. and Mrs. I.P.D.
|
