| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: to Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to
write than the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that
her own feelings were in any like measure engaged; but because,
as the decision to give up Strefford affirmed itself, she
remembered only his kindness, his forbearance, his good humour,
and all the other qualities she had always liked in him; and
because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must cause him
so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She
knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever
way she framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its
task. Then she remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife:
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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 Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Ugolin d' Azzo, who was living with us,
Frederick Tignoso and his company,
The house of Traversara, and th' Anastagi,
And one race and the other is extinct;
The dames and cavaliers, the toils and ease
That filled our souls with love and courtesy,
There where the hearts have so malicious grown!
O Brettinoro! why dost thou not flee,
Seeing that all thy family is gone,
And many people, not to be corrupted?
Bagnacaval does well in not begetting
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: of her lover, Eyraud, in the murder of the bailiff, Gouffe.
The crime, she stated, had been committed in No. 3 in the Rue
Tronson-Ducoudray, but she had not been present; she knew nothing
of it but what had been told her by Eyraud. After the murder she
had accompanied him to America; there they had met the middle-
aged gentleman, her companion. Eyraud had proposed that
they should murder and rob him, but she had divulged the plot to
the gentleman and asked him to take her away. It was acting on
his advice that she had returned to France, determined to give
her evidence to the judicial authorities in Paris. The middle-
aged gentleman declared himself ready to vouch for the truth of a
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths of
love, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold
nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the
present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive
ornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of her
class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was
absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage
but to look the fairer, and moreover, no woman could live without
luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and military
men are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sort
of exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feels
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