| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: understand the stupefaction of the Southerner on seeing her. Though
she had received him at first rather coldly, he became the object of
her good graces before they had been many minutes alone together.
"How strange!" said Gazonal, looking round him disdainfully on the
furniture of the salon, the door of which his accomplices had left
half open, "that a woman like you should be allowed to live in such an
ill-furnished apartment."
"Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol is not rich; I am
hoping he will be made a minister."
"What a happy man!" cried Gazonal, heaving the sigh of a provincial.
"Good!" thought she. "I shall have new furniture, and get the better
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: done us no harm. We are scoundrels. . . . We take our pleasure,
and the innocent babies have to pay the penalty. Only to think of
all this wretched business!
I've done wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I
lay it at the Myelkins' door, they'll send it to the foundling
hospital, and there it will grow up among strangers, in
mechanical routine, . . . no love, no petting, no spoiling. . . .
And then he'll be apprenticed to a shoemaker, . . . he'll take to
drink, will learn to use filthy language, will go hungry. A
shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of good
family. . . . He is my flesh and blood, . . . "
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
