| 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: have on hand the fig-leaf which our mother Eve bequeathed to her.
Consequently, when Eugene, interpreting, in favor of his vanity, the
refusal to admit him, bowed to Madame de Listomere in a tolerably
intentional manner, she veiled her thoughts behind one of those
feminine smiles which are more impenetrable than the words of a king.
"Are you unwell, madame? You denied yourself to visitors."
"I am well, monsieur."
"Perhaps you were going out?"
"Not at all."
"You expected some one?"
"No one."
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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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: dead or a fugitive somewhere was Judson Clark, but that thought she
had to keep out of her mind. Sometimes, as the play went on, and
she was able to make her solid investments out of it, she wondered
if her ten years of retirement had been all the price she was to
pay for his ruin; but she put that thought away too, although she
never minimized her responsibility when she faced it.
But her price had been heavy at that. She was childless and alone,
lavishing her aborted maternity on a brother who was living his
prosperous, cheerful and not too moral life at her expense. Fred
was, she knew, slightly drunk with success; he attended to his
minimum of labor with the least possible effort, had an expensive
The Breaking Point |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: sudden transformation of this illustrious author, it is necessary to
realize the simplicity that constant work and solitude leave in the
heart; all that love--reduced to a mere need, and now repugnant,
beside an ignoble woman--excites of regret and longings for diviner
sentiments in the higher regions of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed,
the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An
illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful
Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and
seek, if only to make a plaything of him,--that power which they
consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she
had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: 1750, and crystallized in a few trenchant words--the diamonds of our
national thought. Blondet is driving a hearse to his own suicide;
Blondet, forsooth! who manufactures newspaper accounts of the last
words of all the great men that die without saying anything!"
"Come, get on," put in Finot.
"It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness of a man
consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compliment to Couture).
Well, now, do you not see at what a price Godefroid secured the
greatest happiness of a young man's dreams? He was trying to
understand Isaure, by way of making sure that she should understand
him. Things which comprehend one another must needs be similar.
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