The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: '"Strangers, who are ye? Whence sail ye over the wet ways?
On some trading enterprise or at adventure do ye rove, even
as sea-robbers over the brine, for at hazard of their own
lives they wander, bringing bale to alien men."
'So spake he, but as for us our heart within us was broken
for terror of the deep voice and his own monstrous shape;
yet despite all I answered and spake unto him, saying:
'"Lo, we are Achaeans, driven wandering from Troy, by all
manner of winds over the great gulf of the sea; seeking our
homes we fare, but another path have we come, by other
ways: even such, methinks, was the will and the counsel of
 The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: children.'--'Impossible!'--So you may imagine how such a changeling as
little La Baudraye must hate that colossal Milaud."
There was at Nevers a plebeian branch of the Milauds, which had grown
so rich in the cutlery trade that the present representative of that
branch had been brought up to the civil service, in which he had
enjoyed the patronage of Marchangy, now dead.
It will be as well to eliminate from this story, in which moral
developments play the principal part, the baser material interests
which alone occupied Monsieur de la Baudraye, by briefly relating the
results of his negotiations in Paris. This will also throw light on
certain mysterious phenomena of contemporary history, and the
 The Muse of the Department |