| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: with whom he will not allow himself to flirt.
"Very good-looking--that young man," said she in a whisper to
Hortense.
"Oh, do you think so?" she replied. "I never noticed him."
"Stidmann, my good fellow," said Wenceslas, in an undertone to his
friend, "we are on no ceremony, you and I--we have some business to
settle with this old girl."
Stidmann bowed to the ladies and went away.
"It is settled," said Wenceslas, when he came in from taking leave of
Stidmann. "But there are six months' work to be done, and we must live
meanwhile."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: to become royal bridegrooms for a single night,-- that after their bridal
they will have no moral right to live,-- that marriage, for each and all of
them, will signify certain death,-- and that they cannot even hope to be
lamented by their young widows, who will survive them for a time of many
generations...!
V
But all the foregoing is no more than a proem to the real "Romance of the
Insect-World."
-- By far the most startling discovery in relation to this astonishing
civilization is that of the suppression of sex. In certain advanced forms
of ant-life sex totally disappears in the majority of individuals;-- in
Kwaidan |
