| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: deepest solitude, seeing no one but the king, doing his business by
means of Jews, who, shrewd calculators, served him well in order to
gain his all-powerful protection.
Some time after this affair, the king himself procured for his old
"torconnier" a young orphan in whom he took an interest. Louis XI.
called Maitre Cornelius familiarly by that obsolete term, which, under
the reign of Saint-Louis, meant a usurer, a collector of imposts, a
man who pressed others by violent means. The epithet, "tortionnaire,"
which remains to this day in our legal phraseology, explains the old
word torconnier, which we often find spelt "tortionneur." The poor
young orphan devoted himself carefully to the affairs of the old
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: treason. My lord is not on his guard; and if you should kill him
thus, you would do a very ugly deed, and I should have the blame
for it. Every one in the land would say that it had been done
with my consent. Go and rest until the morrow, when my lord
shall be about to rise. Then you can better do him harm without
blame and without reproach." With her heart's thoughts her words
do not agree. "Sire," says she, "believe me now! Have no
anxiety; but send here to-morrow your knights and squires and
have me carried away by force. My lord will rush to my defence,
for he is proud and bold enough. Either in earnest or in jest,
have him seized and treated ill, or strike his head off, if you
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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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: was no end to this swindling; and as the difficulties of his
improvident ambition gathered thicker round him, he
really came to hate everybody he had ever come in con-
tact with. A temper naturally irritable and an amazing
sensitiveness to the claims of his own personality had
ended by making of life for him a sort of inferno--a
place where his lost soul had been given up to the tor-
ment of savage brooding.
But he had never hated anyone so much as that old
man who had turned up one evening to save him from
an utter disaster,--from the conspiracy of the wretched
End of the Tether |
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 War and the Future by H. G. Wells: workers. He lifts a hand gravely: "I said, what we must do is
abolish altogether the counting of change."
At a certain hour, he explained, came pay-time. The people had
done; it was to his interest and their that they should get out
of the works as quickly as possible and rest and amuse
themselves. He watched them standing in queues at the wickets
while inside someone counted; so many francs, so many centimes.
It bored him to see this useless, tiresome waiting. It is
abolished. Now at the end of each week the worker goes to a
window under the initial of his name, and is handed a card on
which these items have been entered:
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