| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: He had bound himself by his promise to her; and the people awaited his
next movement. But the death that night of some conspicuous man that
had been predicted to him by Phanuel,--what if, by bringing it upon
another, he could avert it from himself, thought Antipas. If Iaokanann
was in very truth the Elias so much talked of, he would have power to
protect himself; and if he were only an ordinary man, his murder was
of no importance.
Mannaeus stood beside his chair, and read his master's thoughts.
Vitellius beckoned him to his side and gave him an order for the
execution, to be transmitted to the soldiers placed on guard over the
dungeon. This execution would be a relief, he thought. In a few
Herodias |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: are still savages. If I might give my advice to Monsieur le comte it
would be to sell this estate and put the money in the Funds; he would
double his income and have no anxieties. If he likes living in the
country he could buy a chateau near Paris with a park as beautiful as
that of Les Aigues, surrounded by walls, where no one can annoy him,
and where he can let all his farms and receive the money in good bank-
bills, and have no law suits from one year's end to another. He could
come and go in three or four hours, and Monsieur Blondet and Monsieur
le marquis would not be so often away from you, Madame la comtesse."
"I, retreat before the peasantry when I did not recoil before the
Danube!" cried the general.
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