| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: alike of cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in
a proper frame of mind.
"I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to take you to-
night," he said, taking Victurnien's hands and tapping on them. "You
are going to see Mlle. des Touches; all the pretty women with any
pretensions to wit will be at her house en petit comite. Literature,
art, poetry, any sort of genius, in short, is held in great esteem
there. It is one of our old-world bureaux d'esprit, with a veneer of
monarchical doctrine, the livery of this present age."
"It is sometimes as tiresome and tedious there as a pair of new boots,
but there are women with whom you cannot meet anywhere else," said de
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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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: fall in with his mother's views in case he could do no better for
himself. Wherefore, he kept up his acquaintance with the druggists in
the Rue du Cherche-Midi.
"To put another kind of happiness before you, you should have a
description of these shopkeepers, male and female. They rejoiced in
the possession of a handsome ground floor and a strip of garden; for
amusement, they watched a little squirt of water, no bigger than a
cornstalk, perpetually rising and falling upon a small round freestone
slab in the middle of a basin some six feet across; they would rise
early of a morning to see if the plants in the garden had grown in the
night; they had nothing to do, they were restless, they dressed for
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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 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: them; that she had, in her husband's early days, helped him feed
and bed their one horse, often currying him herself; that when she
and her Tom had moved to Rockville with their savings and there
were three horses to care for and her husband needed more help
than he could hire, she had brought her little baby Patsy to the
stable while she worked there like a man; that during all this
time she had cooked and washed and kept the house tidy for four
people; that she had done all these things she felt would not
count now with the Union, though each member of it was a
bread-winner like herself.
She knew what power it wielded. There had been the Martin family,
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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 Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie: Each day saw them set out on a new quest. Julius was like a
hound on the leash. He followed up the slenderest clue. Every
car that had passed through the village on the fateful day was
tracked down. He forced his way into country properties and
submitted the owners of the motors to a searching
cross-examination. His apologies were as thorough as his methods,
and seldom failed in disarming the indignation of his victims;
but, as day succeeded day, they were no nearer to discovering
Tuppence's whereabouts. So well had the abduction been planned
that the girl seemed literally to have vanished into thin air.
And another preoccupation was weighing on Tommy's mind.
Secret Adversary |
