| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: to satisfy his curiosity about Madame Firmiani, and found it not at
all assuaged by the Parisian gossip which he heard, was a man of honor
and breeding. His sole heir was a nephew, whom he greatly loved, in
whose interests he planted his poplars. When a man thinks without
annoyance about his heir, and watches the trees grow daily finer for
his future benefit, affection grows too with every blow of the spade
around her roots. Though this phenomenal feeling is not common, it is
still to be met with in Touraine.
This cherished nephew, named Octave de Camps, was a descendant of the
famous Abbe de Camps, so well known to bibliophiles and learned men,--
who, by the bye, are not at all the same thing. People in 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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: intoxication, or yellow with indigestion. It lasts but two days, but
it steals to-morrow's bread, the week's soup, the wife's dress, the
child's wretched rags. Men, born doubtless to be beautiful--for all
creatures have a relative beauty--are enrolled from their childhood
beneath the yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel,
the loom, and have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his
hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous
nation--sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season,
and once in a century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe
with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine,
to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: committed his house and estate to their care and management;
and sent Tritymallus, the Messenian, to him a second time,
desiring that the castle might be equally garrisoned by the
Spartans and Achaeans, and promising to Aratus himself double
the pension that he received from king Ptolemy. But Aratus,
refusing the conditions, and sending his own son with the
other hostages to Antigonus, and persuading the Achaeans to
make a decree for delivering the castle into Antigonus's
hands, upon this Cleomenes invaded the territory of the
Sicyonians, and by a decree of the Corinthians, accepted
Aratus's estate as a gift.
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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: conversation in past times was in husbandry,[17] shall, by reason of
the multitude of invading armies, be ousted from their labours. The
work of their hands may indeed be snatched from them, but they were
brought up in stout and manly fashion. They stand, each one of them,
in body and soul equipped; and, save God himself shall hinder them,
they will march into the territory of those their human hinderers, and
take from them the wherewithal to support their lives. Since often
enough in war it is surer and safer to quest for food with sword and
buckler than with all the instruments of husbandry.
[15] Reading {thelousa}, vulg., or if after Cobet, {theos ousa},
transl. "by sanction of her divinity." With {thelousa} Holden
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