| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: upon the count through the eye-holes of her mask, made Beauvouloir
shudder.
"She will die if she loses that child too soon," he said to the count.
During the latter part of this scene the lord of Herouville seemed to
hear and see nothing. Rigid, and as if absorbed in meditation, he
stood by the window drumming on its panes. But he turned at the last
words uttered by the bonesetter, with an almost frenzied motion, and
came to him with uplifted dagger.
"Miserable clown!" he cried, giving him the opprobrious name by which
the Royalists insulted the Leaguers. "Impudent scoundrel! your science
which makes you the accomplice of men who steal inheritances is all
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: Rather, so long as I live, I will give him full measure, if it
please God, in whom I trust." Thus he consoles himself, and has
no other desire than to meet his antagonist on the field. And he
will not have long to wait, I think, for Lancelot goes in search
of him, expecting soon to conquer him. But before the assault
begins, the King bids them go down into the plain where the tower
stands, the prettiest place this side of Ireland for a fight. So
they did, and soon found themselves on the plain below. The King
goes down too, and all the rest, men and women in crowds. No one
stays behind; but many go up to the windows of the tower, among
them the Queen, her ladies and damsels, of whom she had many with
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his
arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of
Watschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. The
London house had already been advised of the draft about to be made
upon them, he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent
(chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave
Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to
Italy, and the passage-money had been paid in the name of the Conte
Ferraro. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He
had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for
him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the
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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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: sounded as though a blind puppy were squeaking above the lamp;
then as if a stone were being ground on hard ice; and again,
like muffled blows on a drum; but all dragged out and made
small, as though they travelled through a little horn a weary
distance away.
"We shall not go to Sedna lying down," said Kotuko. "It is the
breaking. The tornaq has cheated us. We shall die."
All this may sound absurd enough, but the two were face to face
with a very real danger. The three days' gale had driven the
deep water of Baffin's Bay southerly, and piled it on to the
edge of the far-reaching land-ice that stretches from Bylot's
The Second Jungle Book |
