Today's Stichomancy for Kate Beckinsale

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde:

HERODE. Pourquoi? Je l'ai fait capitaine!

SECOND SOLDAT. Nous ne savons pas, Seigneur. Mais il s'est tue lui-meme.

HERODE. Cela me semble etrange. Je pensais qu'il n'y avait que les philosophes romains qui se tuaient. N'est-ce pas, Tigellin, que les philosophes e Rome se tuent?

TIGELLIN. Il y en a qui se tuent, Seigneur. Ce sont les Stoiciens. Ce sont de gens tres grossiers. Enfin, ce sont des gens tres ridicules. Moi, je les trouve tres ridicules.

HERODE. Moi aussi. C'est ridicule de se tuer.

TIGELLIN. On rit beaucoup d'eux e Rome. L'empereur a fait un poeme

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain:

And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it. [The interest of the audience was steadily deepening now.]

"I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer. While I turn my back now, I beg that several persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may set THEIR finger marks. Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others, will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar:

wonderful city, said Sylves'. Why, it was always like New Orleans at Mardi Gras with the people. He had seen Joseph Lascaud, and he had a place to work promised him. He was well, but he wanted, oh, so much, to see maman and Louisette. But then, he could wait.

Was ever such a wonderful letter? Louisette sat for an hour afterwards building gorgeous air-castles, while Ma'am Mouton fingered the paper and murmured prayers to the Virgin for Sylves'. When the bayou overflowed again? That would be in April. Then Louisette caught herself looking critically at her slender brown fingers, and blushed furiously, though Ma'am Mouton

The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories

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 Village Rector by Honore de Balzac:

with gray; for the window and door casings, the entablatures, corner stones, and courses between the stories, are of granite, cut in facets like a diamond. The courtyard, which forms a sloping oval like that of the Chateau de Versailles, is surrounded by brick walls divided into panels by projecting buttresses. At the foot of these walls are groups of rare shrubs, remarkable for the varied color of their greens. Two fine iron gates placed opposite to each other lead on one side to a terrace which overlooks Montegnac, on the other to the offices and a farm-house.

The grand entrance-gate, to which the road just constructed led, is flanked by two pretty lodges in the style of the sixteenth century.