| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: too."
Then other scenes. The Stundists--a sect
--being broken up and dispersed; the clergy re-
fusing first to marry, then to bury a Protestant.
Orders given concerning the passage of the Im-
perial railway train. Soldiers kept sitting in the
mud--cold, hungry, and cursing. Decrees is-
sued relating to the educational institutions of the
Empress Mary Department. Corruption ram-
pant in the foundling homes. An undeserved
monument. Thieving among the clergy. The
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his prayers, and who
longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed in people--as he
believed in her, for instance--it was with his whole heart. He could not
be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how terribly he suffered if he
thought any one--she--was not being dead straight, dead sincere with him!
"This is too subtle for me!" He flung out the words, but his open,
quivering, distraught look was like the look of a trapped beast.
But the trouble was--here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter--she saw her Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the rest of
the time it was like living in a house that couldn't be cured of the habit
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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 The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: the first we reckoned one, for the next, two; for the third,
four; and so went on doubling to the end of the account.
v. 106. Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram.] Not
injured, like the productions of our spring, by the influence of
autumn, when the constellation Aries rises at sunset.
v. 110. Dominations.]
Hear all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, domination's, princedoms, virtues, powers.
Milton, P. L. b. v. 601.
v. 119. Dionysius.] The Areopagite, in his book De Caelesti
Hierarchia.
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: quarters, between No. 30 and No. 130 of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-
Honore. During the winter, she haunts the terrace of the Feuillants,
but not the asphalt pavement that lies parallel. According to the
weather, she may be seen flying in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees,
which is bounded on the east by the Place Louis XV., on the west by
the Avenue de Marigny, to the south by the road, to the north by the
gardens of the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Never is this pretty variety of
woman to be seen in the hyperborean regions of the Rue Saint-Denis,
never in the Kamtschatka of miry, narrow, commercial streets, never
anywhere in bad weather. These flowers of Paris, blooming only in
Oriental weather, perfume the highways; and after five o'clock fold up
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