Today's Stichomancy for Robert Redford

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac:

daughter's soul?"

The Abbe spoke too low, and the partition was too thick for Francoise to hear the reply.

"Alas!" sobbed the woman, "the wretch has left me nothing that I can bequeath. When he robbed me of my dear Caroline, he parted us, and only allowed me three thousand francs a year, of which the capital belongs to my daughter."

"Madame has a daughter, and nothing to live on but an annuity," shrieked Francoise, bursting into the drawing-room.

The three old crones looked at each other in dismay. One of them, whose nose and chin nearly met with an expression that betrayed a

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac:

by deteriorating annoyances. A clerk in the employ of the Rothchilds corresponds with all England; another, in a government office, may communicate with all the prefects; but where the one learns the way to make his fortune, the other loses time and health and life to no avail. An undermining evil lies here. Certainly a nation does not seem threatened with immediate dissolution because an able clerk is sent away and a middling sort of man replaces him. Unfortunately for the welfare of nations individual men never seem essential to their existence. But in the long run when the belittling process is fully carried out nations will disappear. Every one who seeks instruction on this point can look at Venice, Madrid, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Rome; all

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville:

always drop water; and some men say that they weep for our Lord's death. And nigh that altar is a place under earth forty-two degrees of deepness, where the holy cross was found, by the wit of Saint Helen, under a rock where the Jews had hid it. And that was the very cross assayed; for they found three crosses, one of our Lord, and two of the two thieves; and Saint Helen proved them by a dead body that arose from death to life, when that it was laid on it, that our Lord died on. And thereby in the wall is the place where the four nails of our Lord were hid: for he had two in his hands and two in his feet. And, of one of these, the Emperor of Constantinople made a bridle to his horse to bear him in battle;

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 Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde:

Wool-selling or wool-gathering is for you. My wits have other quarries.

BIANCA. Noble Lord, I pray you pardon my good husband here, His soul stands ever in the market-place, And his heart beats but at the price of wool. Yet he is honest in his common way. [To Simone] And you, have you no shame? A gracious Prince Comes to our house, and you must weary him With most misplaced assurance. Ask his pardon.