| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: Heaven for this last catastrophe, for in fancy she saw the husband
settled at last in the bosom of his family.
"Lisbeth was right," said Madame Hulot gently and without any useless
recrimination, "she told us how it would be."
"Yes. If only I had listened to her, instead of flying into a rage,
that day when I wanted poor Hortense to go home rather than compromise
the reputation of that--Oh! my dear Adeline, we must save Wenceslas.
He is up to his chin in that mire!"
"My poor old man, the respectable middle-classes have turned out no
better than the actresses," said Adeline, with a smile.
The Baroness was alarmed at the change in her Hector; when she saw him
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold
them differently, or hold them not at all. Well, if he has
the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for
him. They will see the other side of propositions and the
other side of virtues. He need not change his dogma for
that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he
must supplement and correct his deductions from it. A human
truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life
as it displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it
seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our
restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy
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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 Confidence by Henry James: In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man,
there is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice.
When I say "inevitably," I mean that this is what the woman sees in it.
This is what Bernard believed that Angela Vivian saw in the fact
that by giving his friend a bad account of her he had prevented her
making an opulent marriage. At first he had said to himself that,
whether he had held his tongue or spoken, she had already lost her chance;
but with time, somehow, this reflection had lost its weight in the scale.
It conveyed little re-assurance to his irritated conscience--
it had become imponderable and impertinent. At the moment of which I
speak it entirely failed to present itself, even for form's sake;
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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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: resembles cowardice--to take fire like a young man; he remained,
therefore, perfectly calm and cold.
"It wouldn't be right, monsieur," said Flore, "to live on sixty francs
a month under the nose of an uncle who has forty thousand francs a
year, and who has already behaved so kindly to Captain Gilet, his
natural relation, here present--"
"Yes, Philippe," cried the old man, "you must see that!"
On Flore's presentation, Philippe made a half-timid bow to Max.
"Uncle, I have some pictures to return to you; they are now at
Monsieur Hochon's. Will you be kind enough to come over some day and
identify them."
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