| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: house through the parlour door, which stood half open. The room
inside was pitch dark, but she took me fearlessly by the hand and
led me quickly through it, and along the passage, until we came
to the cheerful lighted hall, where a great fire burned on the
hearth. All traces of the soldiers' occupation had been swept
away. But the room was empty.
She led me to the fire, and there in the full light, no longer a
shadowy creature, but red-lipped, brilliant, throbbing with life
and beauty, she stood opposite me--her eyes shining, her colour
high, her breast heaving.
'Do I believe it?' she said in a thrilling voice. 'I will tell
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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 Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: a better way without the Mass. I wager [Thus it will come to
pass] that the Mass will then collapse of itself, not only
among the insane [rude] common people, but also among all
pious, Christian, reasonable, God-fearing hearts; and that the
more, when they would hear that the Mass is a [very] dangerous
thing, fabricated and invented without the will and Word of
God.
Fourthly. Since such innumerable and unspeakable abuses have
arisen in the whole world from the buying and selling of
masses, the Mass should by right be relinquished, if for no
other purpose than to prevent abuses, even though in itself it
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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 Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: listening to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing
ceased, Rodolphe landed and sent away the boat and rowers. At the cost
of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the water-worn granite
shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which
ran a long lime avenue in the Bergmanns' garden. By the end of an hour
he heard steps and voices just above him, but the words that reached
his ears were all Italian, and spoken by two women.
He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers were at one end
of the walk to slip noiselessly to the other. After half an hour of
struggling he got to the end of the avenue, and there took up a
position whence, without being seen or heard, he could watch the two
Albert Savarus |
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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: late he had sometimes held away from her for an entire day,
redoubling his devotion upon the next and the next, as though to
make up for hours that had been lost. She missed him the days when
some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses
the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun
when it was shining.
The people walked in little groups toward the beach. They
talked and laughed; some of them sang. There was a band playing
down at Klein's hotel, and the strains reached them faintly,
tempered by the distance. There were strange, rare odors abroad--
a tangle of the sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth,
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
