| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: owe reparation? But I love; I love passionately. My love is my life.
If I, without apparent motive, suggest to a young girl accustomed to
luxury, to elegance, to a life fruitful of all enjoyments of art, a
young girl who loves to idly listen at the opera to Rossini's music,--
if to her I should propose that she deprive herself of fifteen hundred
thousand francs in favor of broken-down old men, or scrofulous
paupers, she would turn her back on me and laugh, or her confidential
friend would tell her that I'm a crazy jester. If in an ecstasy of
love, I should paint to her the charms of a modest life, and a little
home on the banks of the Loire; if I were to ask her to sacrifice her
Parisian life on the altar of our love, it would be, in the first
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: every month to help him to conquer Gaul; and I always
found the numbers were as he said. Wonderful! And I tell
another strange thing!'
He joined his hands across his knees, and leaned his
head on the curve of the shield behind him.
'Late in the summer, when the first frosts begin and the
Picts kill their bees, we three rode out after wolf with
some new hounds. Rutilianus, our General, had given us
ten days' leave, and we had pushed beyond the Second
Wall - beyond the Province of Valentia - into the higher
hills, where there are not even any of old Rome's ruins.
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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 She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: idiot, cub, and run me through the guts. Damn YOUR way of fighting, I
say. After we take a knock in this part of the country, we kiss and be
friends. But if you had run me through the guts, then I should be
dead, and you might go kiss the hangman.
HASTINGS. The rebuke is just. But I must hasten to relieve Miss
Neville: if you keep the old lady employed, I promise to take care of
the young one. [Exit HASTINGS.]
TONY. Never fear me. Here she comes. Vanish. She's got from the
pond, and draggled up to the waist like a mermaid.
Enter MRS. HARDCASTLE.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Oh, Tony, I'm killed! Shook! Battered to death. I
She Stoops to Conquer |
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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: GUIDO
[breaking from her]
O damned saint! O angel fresh from Hell!
What bloody devil tempted thee to this!
That thou hast killed thy husband, that is nothing -
Hell was already gaping for his soul -
But thou hast murdered Love, and in its place
Hast set a horrible and bloodstained thing,
Whose very breath breeds pestilence and plague,
And strangles Love.
DUCHESS
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