| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: He is the most abject-looking of human beings--lame, and afflicted
with a hideous eye-disease; but he is a good worker and plods
along unwearyingly from sunrise to dusk.
"Pray, my good stork," said I, or German words to that effect,
"why don't you stay here altogether, instead of going home and rioting
away all you have earned?"
"I would stay," he answered," but I have my wife there in Russia."
"Your wife!" I exclaimed, stupidly surprised that the poor deformed
creature should have found a mate--as though there were not a superfluity
of mates in the world--"I didn't know you were married?"
"Yes, and I have two little children, and I <111>
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Though the great things of life are simple to understand and easy to
express, the littlenesses require a vast number of details to explain
them. The foregoing events, which may be called a sort of prologue to
this bourgeois drama, in which we shall find passions as violent as
those excited by great interests, required this long introduction; and
it would have been difficult for any faithful historian to shorten the
account of these minute developments.
II
The next morning, on awaking, Birotteau thought so much of his
prospective canonry that he forgot the four circumstances in which he
had seen, the night before, such threatening prognostics of a future
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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 Hellenica by Xenophon: spare a single thing. When they turned a deaf ear to this summons, the
other proceeded to do what he threatened, systematically laying the
district waste, felling the timber and cutting down the fruit-trees,
while slowly moving on at the rate of ten or twelve furlongs a day.
The Acarnanians, owing to the snail-like progress of the enemy, were
lulled into a sense of security. They even began bringing down their
cattle from their alps, and devoted themselves to the tillage of far
the greater portion of their fields. But Agesilaus only waited till
their rash confidence reached its climax; then on the fifteenth or
sixteenth day after he head first entered the country he sacrificed at
early dawn, and before evening had traversed eighteen miles[5] or so
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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 A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: fess!' I said.
"'But, supposing I am fond of her?' . . .
"Well, what could I say to that? . . . I was
nonplussed. After a short interval of silence,
however, I told him that if Bela's father were
to claim her he would have to give her up.
"'Not at all!'
"'But he will get to know that she is
here.'
"'How?'
"Again I was nonplussed.
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