| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: expenditure for a man with Castanier's income. The ex-dragoon was
compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he
could not bring himself to renounce this delightful life. He loved the
woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of
those men who, through self-love or through weakness of character, can
refuse nothing to a woman; false shame overpowers them, and they
rather face ruin than make the admissions: "I cannot----" "My means
will not permit----" "I cannot afford----"
When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from the
abyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina
and live upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: thought of nothing else; the wedding party and the music ceased to
exist, my curiosity was roused to the highest pitch, for my soul
passed into the body of the clarionet player.
The fiddle and the flageolet were neither of them interesting; their
faces were of the ordinary type among the blind--earnest, attentive,
and grave. Not so the clarionet player; any artist or philosopher must
have come to a stop at the sight of him.
Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with
a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified
the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the
dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that broke
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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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: the exercise of injustice, and ceased to wonder at the perversions
of the understanding, which systematize oppression; but, when told
that her child, only four months old, had been torn from her, even
while she was discharging the tenderest maternal office, the woman
awoke in a bosom long estranged from feminine emotions, and Jemima
determined to alleviate all in her power, without hazarding the
loss of her place, the sufferings of a wretched mother, apparently
injured, and certainly unhappy. A sense of right seems to result
from the simplest act of reason, and to preside over the faculties
of the mind, like the master-sense of feeling, to rectify the rest;
but (for the comparison may be carried still farther) how often is
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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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: one of those seemingly small matters which imply such great
development of thought and such widespread trouble of the soul, that
only the bare fact can be recorded; the interpretation of it must be
left to the fancy of each individual mind. One day, when M. de Nueil
had been shooting over the lands of Manerville and Valleroy, he
crossed Mme. de Beauseant's park on his way home, summoned Jacques,
and when the man came, asked him, "Whether the Marquise was as fond of
game as ever?"
Jacques answering in the affirmative, Gaston offered him a good round
sum (accompanied by plenty of specious reasoning) for a very little
service. Would he set aside for the Marquise the game that the Count
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