| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which
I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are
only amusing yourself with me."
The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.
"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."
"What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
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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 Cavalry General by Xenophon: [33] i.e. the {katastasis}, "allowance," so technically called. Cf.
Lys. "for Mantitheos"; Jebb, "Att. Or." i. 246; Boeckh, "P. E. A."
II. xxi. p. 263; K. F. Hermann, 152, 19; Martin, op. cit. p. 341.
But to proceed. In order to create a spirit of obedience in your
subordinates, you have two formidable instruments;[34] as a matter of
plain reason you can show them what a host of blessings the word
discipline implies; and as a matter of hard fact you can, within the
limits of the law, enable the well-disciplined to reap advantage,
while the undisciplined are made to feel the pinch at every turn.
[34] "The one theoretic, the other practical."
But if you would rouse the emulation of your phylarchs, if you would
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