| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: four hours to myself between six and ten o'clock.'
"Maxime looked through the directory, and found the following
reassuring item:
"DENISART,* retired custom-house officer, Rue de la Victoire.
"His uneasiness vanished.
"Gradually the Sieur Denisart and the Sieur Croizeau began to exchange
confidences. Nothing so binds two men together as a similarity of
views in the matter of womankind. Daddy Croizeau went to dine with 'M.
Denisart's fair lady,' as he called her. And here I must make a
somewhat important observation.
"The reading-room had been paid for half in cash, half in bills signed
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: than mere anxiety about the date of his lectures for fashionable
audiences. What did the man mean by his confounded platitudes? To
Renouard, scared by Luiz in the morning (for he felt that nothing
could be more fatal than to have his deception unveiled otherwise
than by personal confession), this talk sounded like encouragement
or a warning from that man who seemed to him to be very brazen and
very subtle. It was like being bullied by the dead and cajoled by
the living into a throw of dice for a supreme stake.
Renouard went away to some distance from the house and threw
himself down in the shade of a tree. He lay there perfectly still
with his forehead resting on his folded arms, light-headed and
Within the Tides |
