| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: Certain memories of indisputable authenticity attach themselves to a
ruin; but this house, still standing, though being slowly destroyed by
an avenging hand, contained a secret, an unrevealed thought. At the
very least, it testified to a caprice. More than once in the evening I
boarded the hedge, run wild, which surrounded the enclosure. I braved
scratches, I got into this ownerless garden, this plot which was no
longer public or private; I lingered there for hours gazing at the
disorder. I would not, as the price of the story to which this strange
scene no doubt was due, have asked a single question of any gossiping
native. On that spot I wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself
to little debauches of melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: through her, not at her. Harmony turned.
The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was
no further chance to question. The sentry was set to carrying the
boxes down the staircase.
Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in
the market, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower sellers in
the Stephansplatz; shining on Harmony's golden head as she bent
over a bit of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the
whitewashed staircase her heavy cans of milk; on the carrier
pigeon winging its way to the south; beating in through bars to
the exalted face of Herr Georgiev; resting on Peter's drooping
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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 Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: 'Then why do you wait?'
'The lieutenant?' I said modestly.
The Cardinal laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or
two on a slip of paper. 'Give him that,' he said in high good-
humour. 'I fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts
--in this world!'
CHAPTER II.
AT THE GREEN PILLAR
Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts
--a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest.
Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled
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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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: and obtaining from them a military billet in a town already full of
soldiers, they resolved to spend their last night of freedom at an inn
standing some two or three hundred feet from Andernach, the rich color
of which, embellished by the fires of the setting sun, they had
greatly admired from the summit of the hill above the town. Painted
entirely red, this inn produced a most piquant effect in the
landscape, whether by detaching itself from the general background of
the town, or by contrasting its scarlet sides with the verdure of the
surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house
owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon
it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A
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