| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: we can pay them off with our profits. If we cannot pay them in cash,
Roguin will give the money at five per cent, hypothecated on my share
of the property. But such loans will be unnecessary. I have discovered
an essence which will make the hair grow--an Oil Comagene, from Syria!
Livingston has just set up for me a hydraulic press to manufacture the
oil from nuts, which yield it readily under strong pressure. In a
year, according to my calculations, I shall have made a hundred
thousand francs at least. I meditate an advertisement which shall
begin, 'Down with wigs!'--the effect will be prodigious. You have
never found out my wakefulness, Madame! For three months the success
of Macassar Oil has kept me from sleeping. I am resolved to take the
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul, was more than worthy
of that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable flower to wither
unseen on these rough mountains? Should I despise the great gift
offered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a soul
immured; should I not burst its prison? All side considerations
fell off from me; were she the child of Herod I swore I should make
her mine; and that very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense
of treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother. Perhaps I
read him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his
sister always summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect
soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and his very
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: May sweepe to my Reuenge
Ghost. I finde thee apt,
And duller should'st thou be then the fat weede
That rots it selfe in ease, on Lethe Wharfe,
Would'st thou not stirre in this. Now Hamlet heare:
It's giuen out, that sleeping in mine Orchard,
A Serpent stung me: so the whole eare of Denmarke,
Is by a forged processe of my death
Rankly abus'd: But know thou Noble youth,
The Serpent that did sting thy Fathers life,
Now weares his Crowne
Hamlet |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: housekeeper, he said, "Mistress housekeeper may just as well give over
saying the prayer of Santa Apollonia, for I know it is the positive
determination of the spheres that Senor Don Quixote shall proceed to
put into execution his new and lofty designs; and I should lay a heavy
burden on my conscience did I not urge and persuade this knight not to
keep the might of his strong arm and the virtue of his valiant
spirit any longer curbed and checked, for by his inactivity he is
defrauding the world of the redress of wrongs, of the protection of
orphans, of the honour of virgins, of the aid of widows, and of the
support of wives, and other matters of this kind appertaining,
belonging, proper and peculiar to the order of knight-errantry. On,
Don Quixote |
