| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: assured him on my own personal knowledge that
Falk possessed in himself all the qualities to make
his niece's future prosperous. He said he was glad
to hear this, and that he would tell his wife. Then
the object of the visit came out. He wished me to
help him to resume relations with Falk. His niece,
he said, had expressed the hope I would do so in my
kindness. He was evidently anxious that I should,
for though he seemed to have forgotten nine-tenths
of his last night's opinions and the whole of his in-
dignation, yet he evidently feared to be sent to the
 Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: were wholesome, full, red lips, finely wrinkled, sinuous, mobile, by
which nature had given expression to noble feelings; lips which spoke
to the heart and proclaimed the man's intelligence and lucidity, a
gift of second-sight, and a heavenly temper; and you would have judged
him wrongly from looking merely at his sloping forehead, his fireless
eyes, and his shambling gait. His life answered to his countenance; it
was full of secret labor, and hid the virtue of a saint. His superior
knowledge of law proved so strong a recommendation at a time when
Napoleon was reorganizing it in 1808 and 1811, that, by the advice of
Cambaceres, he was one of the first men named to sit on the Imperial
High Court of Justice at Paris. Popinot was no schemer. Whenever any
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