| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: Nikolaievich and which are by Mr. ----!" murmured our old friend,
the pure-hearted and far from malicious Márya
Alexandróvna Schmidt.
This sort of intrusion into my father's work as an author
bore, in the "friend's" language, the modest title of "corrections
beforehand," and there is no doubt that Márya
Alexandróvna was right, for no one will ever know where what
my father wrote ends and where his concessions to Mr. ----'s
persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as this
careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father
answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: These ladies belonged to the aristocratic circles of Tourainean
society, to which Mademoiselle Gamard was not admitted. Therefore the
abbe's abandonment was the more insulting, because it made her feel
her want of social value; all choice implies contempt for the thing
rejected.
"Monsieur Birotteau does not find us agreeable enough," said the Abbe
Troubert to Mademoiselle Gamard's friends when she was forced to tell
them that her "evenings" must be given up. "He is a man of the world,
and a good liver! He wants fashion, luxury, witty conversation, and
the scandals of the town."
These words of course obliged Mademoiselle Gamard to defend herself at
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all the
children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on trial,
how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if asked
anything, he would sit and think - and think, and if he did not
know it, 'my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all - FOI, IL NE VOUS
LE DIRA PAS': which is certainly a very high degree of caution.
At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with his mouth
full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such or such a
time when he had said or done something memorable; and I noticed
that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. She herself was
not boastful in her vein; but she never had her fill of caressing
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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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain,
And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again; 1036
So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled
Into the deep dark cabills of her head;
Where they resign their office and their light
To the disposing of her troubled brain; 1040
Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never wound the heart with looks again;
Who, like a king perplexed in his throne,
By their suggestion gives a deadly groan, 1044
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