| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: "You are behaving like a young man, and very heedlessly," said my
neighbor. "Look at Taillefer!--there, seated on that sofa at the
corner of the fireplace. Mademoiselle Fanny is offering him a cup of
coffee. He smiles. Would a murderer to whom that tale must have been
torture, present so calm a face? Isn't his whole air patriarchal?"
"Yes; but go and ask him if he went to the war in Germany," I said.
"Why not?"
And with that audacity which is seldom lacking to women when some
action attracts them, or their minds are impelled by curiosity, my
neighbor went up to the purveyor.
"Were you ever in Germany?" she asked.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: forgetfulness. He knew it for the queerest of adventures--a
circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert
Strether--that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this
ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other
presence.
When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to
something else. And yet after all the change scarcely operated for
he talked to her of Mrs. Newsome in these days as he had never
talked before. He had hitherto observed in that particular a
discretion and a law; considerations that at present broke down
quite as if relations had altered. They hadn't REALLY altered, he
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