| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: was to die, and evil triumph.
"I have been grossly deceived," cried the virtuous person.
"All is lost now," said the priest.
"I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the devil?" said the
virtuous person.
"Oh, I hope not," said the priest. "And at any rate we can but
try. But what are you doing with your axe?" says he to the rover.
"I am off to die with Odin," said the rover.
XVIII. - THE TOUCHSTONE.
THE King was a man that stood well before the world; his smile was
sweet as clover, but his soul withinsides was as little as a pea.
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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 Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which
absorbed her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty
of a rival might have caused. The struggle of woman against woman
gives to her who loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a
mortification like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and
humiliated the feelings by which she lived. She was ignorant; and she
had reached a point where her ignorance parted her from her husband.
Worse than all, last and keenest torture, he was risking his life, he
was often in danger--near her, yet far away, and she might not share,
nor even know, his peril. Her position became, like hell, a moral
prison from which there was no issue, in which there was no hope.
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