| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of
a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began
a great book on Law.
But he was not allowed to enjoy the monastic peace he had hoped for.
When the celestial Angelique saw him desert worldly society to work at
home with such regularity, she tried to convert him. It had been a
real sorrow to her to know that her husband's opinions were not
strictly Christian; and she sometimes wept as she reflected that if
her husband should die it would be in a state of final impenitence, so
that she could not hope to snatch him from the eternal fires of Hell.
Thus Granville was a mark for the mean ideas, the vacuous arguments,
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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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Weak words, so thick come in his poor heart's aid,
That no man could distinguish what he said.
Yet sometime 'Tarquin' was pronounced plain,
But through his teeth, as if the name he tore.
This windy tempest, till it blow up rain,
Held back his sorrow's tide, to make it more;
At last it rains, and busy winds give o'er:
Then son and father weep with equal strife,
Who should weep most, for daughter or for wife.
The one doth call her his, the other his,
Yet neither may possess the claim they lay,
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