| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: suggest to Philip that it better becomes a monarch to govern burghers of
two different creeds, than to excite them to mutual destruction.
Regent. Never let me hear such words again. Full well I know that the
policy of statesmen rarely maintains truth and fidelity; that it excludes
from the heart candour, charity, toleration. In secular affairs, this is, alas!
only too true; but shall we trifle with God as we do with each other? Shall
we be indifferent to our established faith, for the sake of which so many
have sacrificed their lives? Shall we abandon it to these far-fetched,
uncertain, and self-contradicting heresies?
Machiavel. Think not the worse of me for what I have uttered.
Regent. I know you and your fidelity. I know too that a man may be both
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: be killed, because he had won her whom I loved, though, as it happened,
all the others were slain, and he alone escaped. Then I came here and
learned that Marie was his wife--yes, his wife indeed--and grew mad with
hate and jealousy. So I bore false witness against him, and, you fools,
you believed me and ordered me to shoot him who is innocent before God
and man. Then things went wrong. The woman tricked me again--for the
last time. She dressed herself as the man, and in the dawnlight I was
deceived. I killed her, her whom I love alone, and now her father, who
loved her also, has killed me."
By this time I understood all, for my drugged brain had awakened at
last. I ran to the brute upon the ground; grotesque in my woman's
Marie |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: more quickly. His Reverence was a great friend of the Countess."
"They didn't make so much fuss over the pedlar and Betty," murmured
the cobbler, who suffered from a perpetual grouch. But he followed
the others, who paid their scores hastily and went out into the
streets that they might watch from a distance at least what was
going on in the rectory. The landlord bustled about the inn to have
everything in readiness in case the gentlemen should honour him by
taking a meal, and perhaps even lodgings, at his house. At the gate
of the rectory the coachman and the maid Liska stood to receive the
newcomers, just as five o'clock was striking from the steeple.
It should have been still quite light, but it was already dusk, for
|
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 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: But nothing of that kind occurred, no visitors appeared
to delay them, and they all three set off in good time
for the pump-room, where the ordinary course of events
and conversation took place; Mr. Allen, after drinking
his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over
the politics of the day and compare the accounts of
their newspapers; and the ladies walked about together,
noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet
in the room. The female part of the Thorpe family,
attended by James Morland, appeared among the crowd in less
than a quarter of an hour, and Catherine immediately took
Northanger Abbey |
