| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: it was when you came, the time before last; you were all the time
insisting upon opening the windows in the house!"
"But once more I tell you," cried Madame Dupont, "we are not
putting any blame on you."
"Yes," cried the woman, more vehemently. "I know what that kind
of talk means. It's no use--when you're a poor country woman."
"What are you imagining now?" demanded the other.
"Oh, that's all right. It's no use when you're a poor country
woman."
"I repeat to you once more," cried Madame Dupont, with difficulty
controlling her impatience, "we have nothing whatever to blame
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: discerning, awarded it the crown which Girodet himself had hung over
it. The two pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought for
places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men would have covered
the canvas with double napoleons, but the artist obstinately refused
to sell or to make replicas. An enormous sum was offered him for the
right of engraving them, and the print-sellers were not more favored
than the amateurs.
Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not of a nature
to penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude in the Rue Saint-
Denis. However, when paying a visit to Madame Guillaume, the notary's
wife spoke of the exhibition before Augustine, of whom she was very
|