| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: And wit well that from Babylon to the Mount Sinai is well a twelve
good journeys, and some men make them more. And some men hasten
them and pain them, and therefore they make them less. And always
men find latiners to go with them in the countries, and further
beyond, into time that men con the language: and it behoveth men
to bear victuals with them, that shall dure them in those deserts,
and other necessaries for to live by.
And the Mount of Sinai is clept the Desert of Sin, that is for to
say, the bush burning; because there Moses saw our Lord God many
times in the form of fire burning upon that hill, and also in a
bush burning, and spake to him. And that was at the foot of the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: needed little watching. Nataline took the night duty; it was her
own choice; she loved the charge of the lamp. Marcel was on duty
through the day. They were together for three or four hours in the
morning and in the evening.
It was not a desperate vigil like that affair with the broken
clockwork eight years before. There was no weary turning of the
crank. There was just enough work to do about the house and the
tower to keep them busy. The weather was fair. The worst thing was
the short supply of food. But though they were hungry, they were
not starving. And Nataline still played the fife. She jested, she
sang, she told long fairy stories while they sat in the kitchen.
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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 The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is
witty." Genius always presupposes moral insight. This insight may
be applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must
be able to see the sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has
saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is
alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a surgeon or
a physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and
diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant
pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might
have been no less great as a minister than he was as a surgeon.
Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
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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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Two of the eleven are filled with Marie van Houtte roses,
two with Viscountess Folkestone, two with Laurette Messimy,
one with Souvenir de la Malmaison, one with Adam and Devoniensis,
two with Persian Yellow and Bicolor, and one big bed behind
the sun-dial with three sorts of red roses (seventy-two in all),
Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, and Prefet de Limburg. This bed is,
I am sure, a mistake, and several of the others are, I think,
but of course I must wait and see, being such an ignorant person.
Then I have had two long beds made in the grass on either side
of the semicircle, each sown with mignonette, and one <17> filled
with Marie van Houtte, and the other with Jules Finger and the Bride;
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
