| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: even permitted himself another sly allusion to that little jest of
his concerning the police, which he had promised never again to
mention.
"As to that, you may do as you please. Play the informer, by all
means. But consider that you will just as definitely be deprived
of my services, and that without me you are nothing - as you were
before I joined your company."
M. Binet did not care what the consequences might be. A fig for
the consequences! He would teach this impudent young country
attorney that M. Binet was not the man to be imposed upon.
Scaramouche rose. "Very well," said he, between indifference and
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: but how much more thrilling when you are trespassing on what
might just as well have been your own ground, on what actually
was for years your own ground, and when you are in deadly
peril of seeing the rightful owners, whom you have never met,
but with whom you have quarrelled, appear round the corner,
and of hearing them remark with an inquiring and awful politeness "I
do not think I have the pleasure--?" Then the place was unchanged.
I was standing in the same mysterious tangle of damp little paths
that had always been just there; they curled away on <72> either
side among the shrubs, with the brown tracks of recent footsteps
in the centre of their green stains, just as they did in my day.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
