| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: Desplein at these words clutched Bianchon's arm tightly. "He gave
me the money for my examination fees! That man, my friend,
understood that I had a mission, that the needs of my intellect
were greater than his. He looked after me, he called me his boy,
he lent me money to buy books, he would come in softly sometimes
to watch me at work, and took a mother's care in seeing that I
had wholesome and abundant food, instead of the bad and
insufficient nourishment I had been condemned to. Bourgeat, a man
of about forty, had a homely, mediaeval type of face, a prominent
forehead, a head that a painter might have chosen as a model for
that of Lycurgus. The poor man's heart was big with affections
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: should love you for being so clever."
"It is not cleverness," said she, all her love beaming on her lips.
"Goodnight. Do not come again for some few days. When you see me in
church, at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, with a pink scarf, my father will be
in a better temper.--You will find an answer stuck to the back of the
chair you are sitting in; it will comfort you perhaps for not seeing
me. Put the note you have brought under my handkerchief----"
This young person was evidently more than seven-and-twenty.
Lucien took a cab in the Rue de la Planche, got out of it on the
Boulevards, took another by the Madeleine, and desired the driver to
have the gates opened and drive in at the house in the Rue Taitbout.
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: source to which Paris owes the patch-and-powder eighteenth century
vaudevilles that flooded the stage. Those thousand-and-one
vaudevilles, which raised such an outcry among the /feuilletonistes/,
were written at Mme. du Bruel's express desire. She insisted that her
husband should purchase the hotel on which she had spent so much,
where she had housed five hundred thousand francs' worth of furniture.
Wherefore Tullia never enters into explanations; she understands the
sovereign woman's reason to admiration.
" 'People made a good deal of fun of Cursy,' said she; 'but, as a
matter of fact, he found this house in the eighteenth century rouge-
box, powder, puffs, and spangles. He would never have thought of it
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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 1492 by Mary Johntson: `` `Those brothers are one. Leave him out!' saith the
King. I will read you his mind! `Master Christopherus
Columbus hath had too much from the beginning. Nor is
he necessary as he was. When the breach is made, any
may take the fortress! I will leave him and give him
what I must but no more!' He will send at last another
than Bobadilla, but not again, if he can help it, the old Viceroy!
Of course there is the Queen, but she has many sorrows
these days, and fails, they say, in health.''
``It may be,'' said Juan Lepe. ``I myself were content
for him to rest The Admiral only. But his mind is yet a
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