| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: us. Roguin might run off with the money."
"My wife told me so this very night. She fears--"
"That Roguin will carry off our funds?" said Pillerault, laughing.
"Pray, why?"
"She says there is too much in his nose; and like men who can't have
women, he is furious to--"
With a smile of incredulity, Pillerault tore a strip from a little
book, wrote down an amount, and signed the paper.
"There," said he, "there's a cheque on the Bank of France for a
hundred thousand francs for the Ragons and for me. Those poor folks
have just sold to your scoundrel of a du Tillet their fifteen shares
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: themselves and to one another. And suppose, again, I were to say that
astronomy is only words--he would ask, 'Words about what, Socrates?' and I
should answer, that astronomy tells us about the motions of the stars and
sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.
GORGIAS: You would be quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And now let us have from you, Gorgias, the truth about rhetoric:
which you would admit (would you not?) to be one of those arts which act
always and fulfil all their ends through the medium of words?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Words which do what? I should ask. To what class of things do
the words which rhetoric uses relate?
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