| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: possession of two such admirable bits of genre.
There is yet another difference between the Parisian and the country
attorney. An attorney in Paris very seldom appears in court, though he
is sometimes called upon to act as arbitrator (refere). Barristers, at
the present day, swarm in the provinces; but in 1822 the country
attorney very often united the functions of solicitor and counsel. As
a result of this double life, the attorney acquired the peculiar
intellectual defects of the barrister, and retained the heavy
responsibilities of the attorney. He grew talkative and fluent, and
lost his lucidity of judgment, the first necessity for the conduct of
affairs. If a man of more than ordinary ability tries to do the work
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: speak of the circumstance without getting into a fury and
denouncing it as an outrage. Oh yes! She was indeed a demoniac,
this Miss Harriet, and Mother Lecacheur must have had an
inspiration of genius in thus christening her.
"The stable-boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in
Africa in his youth, entertained other aversions. He said, with a
roguish air: 'She is an old hag who has lived her days.' If the
poor woman had but known!
"Little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but
I was never able to understand why. Probably her only reason was
that she was a stranger, of another race, of a different tongue,
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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 Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: He cast upon us one of the most lamentable glances that I ever saw as
he answered,--
"If I had a wife I must abandon my father; I could not feed him and a
wife and children too."
"Well, my poor lad, why don't you try to earn more at the salt
marshes, or by carrying the salt to the harbor?"
"Ah, monsieur, I couldn't do that work three months. I am not strong
enough, and if I died my father would have to beg. I am forced to take
a business which only needs a little knack and a great deal of
patience."
"But how can two persons live on twelve sous a day?"
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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 Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: that has not been said before him. Furthermore, he intended to follow
this work with a universal history in eight volumes with a view to
establishing, as far as may be gathered, Little Russia and the world
in proper relation, connecting the two; a quixotic task, surely. A
poet, passionate, religious, loving the heroic, we find him constantly
impatient and fuming at the lifeless chronicles, which leave him cold
as he seeks in vain for what he cannot find. "Nowhere," he writes in
1834, "can I find anything of the time which ought to be richer than
any other in events. Here was a people whose whole existence was
passed in activity, and which, even if nature had made it inactive,
was compelled to go forward to great affairs and deeds because of its
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
