| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: girl, but she learned from it only that which her sorrow and her
wounded pride revealed to her.
Juana had the tact of a virgin heart which receives impressions in
advance of the event, after the manner of what are called
"sensitives." The solitary young girl, so suddenly become a woman and
a wife, saw plainly that were she to attempt to compel society to
respect her husband, it must be after the manner of Spanish beggars,
carbine in hand. Besides, the multiplicity of the precautions she
would have to take, would they meet the necessity? Suddenly she
divined society as, once before, she had divined life, and she saw
nothing around her but the immense extent of an irreparable disaster.
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into which he
had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a bright light
made him close them again immediately; but through the mist that
veiled his senses he heard the whispering of two women, and felt
two young, two timid hands on which his head was resting. He soon
recovered consciousness, and by the light of an old-fashioned
Argand lamp he could make out the most charming girl's face he
had ever seen, one of those heads which are often supposed to be
a freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly realized the
theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates for
himself and whence his art proceeds. The features of the unknown
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