| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: [March. Enter WARWICK and MONTAGUE, with their Army.]
WARWICK.
How now, fair lords! What fare? what news abroad?
RICHARD.
Great Lord of Warwick, if we should recount
Our baleful news, and at each word's deliverance
Stab poniards in our flesh till all were told,
The words would add more anguish than the wounds.
O valiant lord, the Duke of York is slain!
EDWARD.
O, Warwick, Warwick! that Plantagenet
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: lost in church, his offer to lend him money, the way
in which he had sat beside Alice at the love-feast
and followed her to the altar-rail in the evening.
These raced abreast through the young minister's brain,
yet with each its own image, and its relation to the others
clearly defined.
He found the nerve, all the same, to take this third trustee
by the hand, and to thank him for his congratulations,
and even to say, with a surface smile of welcome,
"It is BROTHER Gorringe, now, I remember."
The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind.
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: history begins, when Minoret, after selling his inn, built stables and
a splendid dwelling, and removed the post-house from the Grand'Rue to
the wharf. The new establishment cost two hundred thousand francs,
which the gossip of thirty miles in circumference more than doubled.
The Nemours mail-coach service requires a large number of horses. It
goes to Fontainebleau on the road to Paris, and from there diverges to
Montargis and also to Montereau. The relays are long, and the sandy
soil of the Montargis road calls for the mythical third horse, always
paid for but never seen. A man of Minoret's build, and Minoret's
wealth, at the head of such an establishment might well be called,
without contradiction, the master of Nemours. Though he never thought
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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: a tyrant. Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect me
too. Pain has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this a
second time. I cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after
the anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's
life. Only from three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw
strength to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony,
monsieur, usually ends in death; but this--well, it was the agony of
death with no tomb to end it. Oh! I have known pain indeed!"
The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there is
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