| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,
Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?
'If Collatinus dream of my intent,
Will he not wake, and in a desperate rage
Post hither, this vile purpose to prevent?
This siege that hath engirt his marriage,
This blur to youth, this sorrow to the sage,
This dying virtue, this surviving shame,
Whose crime will bear an ever-during blame?
'O, what excuse can my invention make
When thou shalt charge me with so black a deed?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a
flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut
deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in
which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square
head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary
man. Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was
a terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such
terrible punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late.
Baudoyer wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, a chamois waistcoat, gray
trousers and cravats of various colors. His feet were large and
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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 Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott: So they called a little bright-eyed mole, and said, "Downy-Back,
we have given you a pleasant home among our roots, and you are
a grateful little friend; so will you guide dear Thistle to the
Earth Spirits' home?"
Downy-Back said, "Yes," and Thistle, thanking the kindly flowers,
followed his little guide, through long, dark galleries, deeper
and deeper into the ground; while a glow-worm flew before to light
the way. On they went, and after a while, reached a path lit up by
bright jewels hung upon the walls. Here Downy-Back, and Glimmer,
the glow-worm, left him, saying,--
"We can lead you no farther; you must now go on alone, and the music
Flower Fables |
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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: fancies like those of Martin. For a busy man like Canalis, an
adventure of this kind is swept away like a harebell by a mountain
torrent, but in the more unoccupied life of the young secretary, this
charming girl, whom his imagination persistently connected with the
blonde beauty at the window, fastened upon his heart, and did as much
mischief in his regulated life as a fox in a poultry-yard. La Briere
allowed himself to be preoccupied by this mysterious correspondent;
and he answered her last letter with another, a pretentious and
carefully studied epistle, in which, however, passion begins to reveal
itself through pique.
Mademoiselle,--Is it quite loyal in you to enthrone yourself in
Modeste Mignon |
