| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: every day.
Mme. Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage, had taken a
little house in the Rue du Cygne. Furnished lodgings there were none;
the town was not enough of a thoroughfare, and the Camusots could not
afford to live at an inn like M. Michu. So the fair Parisian had no
choice for it but to take such furniture as she could find; and as she
paid a very moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit a
certain quaintness of detail was not wanting. It was built against a
neighboring house in such a fashion that the side with only one window
in each story, gave upon the street, and the front looked out upon a
yard where rose-bushes and buckhorn were growing along the wall on
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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 Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: Beauvouloir, and the granddaughter of your friend La Belle Romaine."
"She is dead," replied the old colossus, with an air both savage and
jeering, which told only too plainly his intention of making away with
her.
A moment of deep silence followed.
The duke saw, through the half-opened door, the three ladies and
d'Artagnon. At that crucial moment Etienne, whose sense of hearing was
acute, heard in the cardinal's library poor Gabrielle's voice,
singing, to let her lover know she was there,--
"Ermine hath not
Her pureness;
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: on the bum for fair."
"I beg your pardon," was all Douglas could say, confused by the
sudden volley of unfamiliar words.
"You're kiddin' me," she said, turning her head to one side as
was her wont when assailed by suspicion; "you MUST a seen me
ride?"
"No, Miss Polly, I have never seen a circus," Douglas told her
half-regretfully, a sense of his deep privation stealing upon
him.
"What!" cried Polly, incredulously.
"Lordy no, chile; he ain't nebber seed none ob dem tings," Mandy
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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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: bedside, for he was at his last gasp, your noble father said to me,
'With Valerie as my wife, I can become a peer of France! I shall buy
an estate I have my eye on--Presles, which Madame de Serizy wants to
sell. I shall be Crevel de Presles, member of the Common Council of
Seine-et-Oise, and Deputy. I shall have a son! I shall be everything I
have ever wished to be.'--'Heh!' said I, 'and what about your
daughter?'--'Bah!' says he, 'she is only a woman! And she is quite too
much of a Hulot. Valerie has a horror of them all.--My son-in-law has
never chosen to come to this house; why has he given himself such airs
as a Mentor, a Spartan, a Puritan, a philanthropist? Besides, I have
squared accounts with my daughter; she has had all her mother's
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