Today's Stichomancy for Peter Gabriel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac:

deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur de Listomere becomes a peer of France, when she herself will be thirty-six years of age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the dupes of social laws.

The marquis is a rather insignificant man. He stands well at court; his good qualities are as negative as his defects; the former can no more make him a reputation for virtue than the latter can give him the sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil:

And hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge, That feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees, Shall oft with gentle murmur lull to sleep, While the leaf-dresser beneath some tall rock Uplifts his song, nor cease their cooings hoarse The wood-pigeons that are your heart's delight, Nor doves their moaning in the elm-tree top.

TITYRUS Sooner shall light stags, therefore, feed in air, The seas their fish leave naked on the strand,

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Princess of Parms by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

my metal. They had me backed against the wall in no time, fighting for my life. Slowly I worked my way to a corner of the room where I could force them to come at me only one at a time, and thus we fought upward of twenty minutes; the clanging of steel on steel producing a veritable bedlam in the little room.

The noise had brought Dejah Thoris to the door of her apartment, and there she stood throughout the conflict with Sola at her back peering over her shoulder. Her face was set and emotionless and I knew that she did not recognize me, nor did Sola.

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 Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac:

everything.

"It is a portrait," I replied. "It is a product of Vien's genius. But that great painter never saw the original, and your admiration will be modified somewhat perhaps, when I tell you that this study was made from a statue of a woman."

"But who is it?"

I hesitated.

"I insist upon knowing," she added earnestly.

"I believe," I said, "that this /Adonis/ represents a--a relative of Madame de Lanty."

I had the chagrin of seeing that she was lost in contemplation of that