| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: wherever it was possible, to protect them and ourselves in "bombast," or
fences of thorns, within which we lit fires to scare away wild beasts.
Notwithstanding these precautions, we lost several of the oxen, and
ourselves had some narrow escapes.
Thus, one night, just as Marie was about to enter the wagon where the
women slept, a great lion, desperate with hunger, sprang over the fence.
She leapt away from the beast, and in so doing caught her foot and fell
down, whereon the lion came for her. In another few seconds she would
have been dead, or carried off living.
But as it chanced, Vrouw Prinsloo was close at hand. Seizing a flaming
bough from the fire, that intrepid woman ran at the lion and, as it
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: was now being searched.
In his youth D'Artagnan had often headed the bourgeoisie
against the military, but he was cured of all those
hot-headed propensities; besides, he had the cardinal's
hundred pistoles in his pocket, so he went into the hotel
without a word. There he found Madeleine alarmed for his
safety and anxious to tell him all the events of the
evening, but he cut her short by ordering her to put his
supper in his room and give him with it a bottle of good
Burgundy.
He took his key and candle and went upstairs to his bedroom.
Twenty Years After |
