| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me."
It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by a
presentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense both
physical and moral of her husband's absence. She did not feel the arm
Jules passed beneath her head,--that arm in which she had slept,
peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. A
voice said to her, "Jules suffers, Jules is weeping." She raised her
head, and then sat up; felt that her husband's place was cold, and saw
him sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head resting
against the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poor
woman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to her
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: law student was yet to live for another two years to come. This
laughing-stock was the retired vermicelli-merchant, Father
Goriot, upon whose face a painter, like the historian, would have
concentrated all the light in his picture.
How had it come about that the boarders regarded him with a half-
malignant contempt? Why did they subject the oldest among their
number to a kind of persecution, in which there was mingled some
pity, but no respect for his misfortunes? Had he brought it on
himself by some eccentricity or absurdity, which is less easily
forgiven or forgotten than more serious defects? The question
strikes at the root of many a social injustice. Perhaps it is
Father Goriot |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: continually in my bosom, by night and by day, and whether I was waking
or asleep. So it befell that after I was come into the fore-part of
the ship where the broad bows splashed into the billows, I was in no
such hurry to return as you might fancy; rather prolonged my absence
like a variety in pleasure. I do not think I am by nature much of an
Epicurean: and there had come till then so small a share of pleasure
in my way that I might be excused perhaps to dwell on it unduly.
When I returned to her again, I had a faint, painful impression as of a
buckle slipped, so coldly she returned the packet.
"You have read them?" said I; and I thought my voice sounded not wholly
natural, for I was turning in my mind for what could ail her.
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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 The Economist by Xenophon: predicaments, please teach me the actual work and processes of
tillage.
[7] Or, "something from dictation."
Isch. But truly,[8] Socrates, it is not with tillage as with the other
arts, where the learner must be well-nigh crushed[9] beneath a load of
study before his prentice-hand can turn out work of worth sufficient
merely to support him.[10] The art of husbandry, I say, is not so ill
to learn and cross-grained; but by watching labourers in the field, by
listening to what they say, you will have straightway knowledge enough
to teach another, should the humour take you. I imagine, Socrates (he
added), that you yourself, albeit quite unconscious of the fact,
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