| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: in the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu's salon two persons stayed on who did
not belong to her family circle. A young and good-looking man heard
the clock strike, and took his leave. When the courtyard echoed with
the sound of a departing carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that
no one was present save her brother and a friend of the family
finishing their game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. The
girl, standing by the chimney-piece, apparently examining a
transparent fire-screen, was listening to the sounds from the
courtyard in a way that justified certain maternal fears.
"Camille," said the Vicomtesse, "if you continue to behave to young
Comte de Restaud as you have done this evening, you will oblige me to
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: good when war meant wearing a kitchin stove and wielding a lance.
It is no longer so. And I will show you."
I did not mean to be boastfull, such not being my nature. But I did
not feel that one who had not yet enlisted, remarking that there
was time enough when the Enemy came over, etcetera, had any right
to criticise me.
12 MIDNIGHT. How can I set down what I have discovered? And having
recorded it, how be sure that Hannah will not snoop around and find
this record, and so ruin everything?
It is midnight. Leila is still out, bent on frivolaty. The rest of
the Familey sleeps quietly, except father, who has taken cold and
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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 An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: at a time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought
rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the wretched
garret. Still they fancied that Citizen Mucius Scaevola was only the
mysterious instrument of a kindness always ingenious, and no less
intelligent.
The noble ladies in the garret could no longer doubt that their
protector was the stranger of the expiatory mass on the night of the
22nd of January, 1793; and a kind of cult of him sprung up among them.
Their one hope was in him; they lived through him. They added special
petitions for him to their prayers; night and morning the pious souls
prayed for his happiness, his prosperity, his safety; entreating God
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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 Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "See those fine, upstanding men swinging along the
broad avenue? See the young girls and the women smile
upon them? See the men greet them with love and respect?
Those be seafarers coming up from their ships which lie
at the quays at the city's edge.
"Brave men, they--ah, but the glory of Lothar has faded!
See their weapons. They alone bore arms, for they crossed
the five seas to strange places where dangers were.
With their passing passed the martial spirit of the
Lotharians, leaving, as the ages rolled by, a race of
spineless cowards.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
