| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: with him to-day; let me find some means for you to avoid it. Ask an
audience of the King; I am sure you will find great satisfaction there
if you concede the point about Baudoyer; and you can obtain something
as an equivalent. Your position will be better than ever if you are
forced later to dismiss a fool whom the court party impose upon you."
"What has made you turn against Rabourdin?"
"Would you forgive Monsieur de Chateaubriand for writing an article
against the ministry? Well, read that, and see how Rabourdin has
treated me in his secret document," said des Lupeaulx, giving the
paper to the minister. "He pretends to reorganize the government from
beginning to end,--no doubt in the interests of some secret society of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: "You distress me, Susanna, by such importunity!"
"Why can't we agree to free each other? We made the compact,
and surely we can cancel it--not legally of course;
but we can morally, especially as no new interests,
in the shape of children, have arisen to be looked after.
Then we might be friends, and meet without pain to either.
Oh Richard, be my friend and have pity! We shall both be
dead in a few years, and then what will it matter to anybody
that you relieved me from constraint for a little while?
I daresay you think me eccentric, or super-sensitive, or
something absurd. Well--why should I suffer for what I was born
Jude the Obscure |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: about to be married.
"You don't mean that you're going to leave us?" she said.
"I've not made up my mind about anything," said Mary--a remark which
could be taken as a generalization.
Mrs. Seal got the teacups out of the cupboard and set them on the
table.
"You're not going to be married, are you?" she asked, pronouncing the
words with nervous speed.
"Why are you asking such absurd questions this afternoon, Sally?" Mary
asked, not very steadily. "Must we all get married?"
Mrs. Seal emitted a most peculiar chuckle. She seemed for one moment
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: by some hideous iron cable bridge, might have observed, had he
dropped his eyes over the parapet, a man about fifty years of age
wearing a leather cap, and trousers and a waistcoat of coarse
gray cloth, to which something yellow which had been a red ribbon,
was sewn, shod with wooden sabots, tanned by the sun, his face
nearly black and his hair nearly white, a large scar on his forehead
which ran down upon his cheek, bowed, bent, prematurely aged,
who walked nearly every day, hoe and sickle in hand, in one of
those compartments surrounded by walls which abut on the bridge,
and border the left bank of the Seine like a chain of terraces,
charming enclosures full of flowers of which one could say, were they
Les Miserables |
