| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: a "covered" merchant. It listens, and believes as it likes. After
three months employed in auditing the debtor and creditor accounts,
the time comes for the /concordat/. The provisional assignees make a
little report at the meeting, of which the following is the usual
formula:--
Messieurs,--There is owing to the whole of us, in bulk, about a
million. We have dismantled our man like a condemned frigate. The
nails, iron, wood, and copper will bring about three hundred
thousand francs. We shall thus get about thirty per cent of our
money. Happy in obtaining this amount, when our debtor might have
left us only one hundred thousand, we hereby declare him an
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: They love us for it, and we ride them down.
Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do,
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score
Flattered and flustered, wins, though dashed with death
He reddens what he kisses: thus I won
You mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness
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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 The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;
And over beauty's aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
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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 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: bing of an old tin lamp."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to
come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or
not."
"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a
church? All right, then; I WOULD come; but I lay
I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in
the country."
"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn.
You don't seem to know anything, somehow -- perfect
saphead."
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
