The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: lodge here, and, among others, General Bertrand, the Duc and Duchesse
d'Abrantes, Monsieur Descazes, and the King of Spain. He did not eat
much, but he had such polite and amiable ways that it was impossible
to owe him a grudge for that. Oh! I was very fond of him, though he
did not say four words to me in a day, and it was impossible to have
the least bit of talk with him; if he was spoken to, he did not
answer; it is a way, a mania they all have, it would seem.
" 'He read his breviary like a priest, and went to mass and all the
services quite regularly. And where did he post himself?--we found
this out later.--Within two yards of Madame de Merret's chapel. As he
took that place the very first time he entered the church, no one
 La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: success to continue upon the lines which Andre-Louis had laid down.
M. le Marquis, prevented by the riot from expressing in person to
Mlle. Binet his purpose of making an end of their relations, had
been constrained to write to her to that effect from Azyr a few days
later. He tempered the blow by enclosing in discharge of all
liabilities a bill on the Caisse d'Escompte for a hundred louis.
Nevertheless it almost crushed the unfortunate and it enabled her
father when he recovered to enrage her by pointing out that she owed
this turn of events to the premature surrender she had made in
defiance of his sound worldly advice. Father and daughter alike
were left to assign the Marquis' desertion, naturally enough, to
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