| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: Besancon. The Prefet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the
Royalist party, devoted by conviction to the Government of July--in
short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Grenelle, the Minister
of the Interior could say, "We have a capital Prefet at Besancon."--
The Prefet read the letter, and, in obedience to its instructions, he
burnt it.
Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert's election, so as to keep him five
years longer at Besancon.
At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in order to
win, the Ministry chose its ground by choosing the moment when it
would give battle. The elections were therefore not to take place for
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: events would take place. This strange conjunction, it seems, has
as strangely come to pass. The same architect has been engaged
lately on the repairs of the cupola of the Exchange, and the
steeple of Bow church; and, fearful to relate, the dragon and
the grasshopper actually lie, cheek by jole, in the yard of his
workshop.
"Others," as Mr. Skryme is accustomed to say, "may go star-
gazing, and look for conjunctions in the heavens, but here is a
conjunction on the earth, near at home, and under our own eyes,
which surpasses all the signs and calculations of astrologers."
Since these portentous weathercocks have thus laid their heads
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: limitless blackness of a winter's night there lay the great
unfenced fields--not a flat and severe plain, but a kindly bread-
giving land of low rounded ridges, all white now, with the black
patches of timber nestling in the hollows. The road by which I
had come ran through the village with a turn just outside the
gates closing the short drive. Somebody was abroad on the deep
snow track; a quick tinkle of bells stole gradually into the
stillness of the room like a tuneful whisper.
My unpacking had been watched over by the servant who had come to
help me, and, for the most part, had been standing attentive but
unnecessary at the door of the room. I did not want him in the
A Personal Record |
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 Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of
the help of a long familiarity to declare itself.
Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring.
Innumerable repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague
yet so profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely
knows to what we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds,
or rays of the sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that
shines for a moment and disappears, that springs to life and dies,
leaving in the heart long echoes of emotion. When the soul is young
enough to nurture melancholy and far-off hope, to find in woman more
Ferragus |
