| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: I saw nothing. No bear swung across the path, no izard showed
itself on the cliffs. The keen, sharp air cut our cheeks and
warned me that we were approaching the summit of the ridge. On
all sides were silence and desolation.
MON DIEU! And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be
thrown might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment.
In my despair I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first
gust carry it to the ground, and then with an oath of annoyance
tossed my feet from the stirrups to go after it. But the rascal
roared to me to keep my seat.
'Forward, Monsieur!' he shouted brutally. 'Go on!'
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: and it was perhaps one of the proofs of her success with him
that he seemed so much to take his ease while they talked.
By the time he had explained to her why his impressions, though
multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if he had been familiarly
talking for hours. They baffled him because Sarah--well, Sarah was
deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance to show herself.
He didn't say that this was partly the effect of her opening so
straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given
Mrs. Newsome's profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach;
but he wasn't without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate
of confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: most happily timed; and I hope that you will make a trial of the young man,
and converse with him in our presence, if you have no objection.
These were pretty nearly the expressions which I used; and Euthydemus, in a
manly and at the same time encouraging tone, replied: There can be no
objection, Socrates, if the young man is only willing to answer questions.
He is quite accustomed to do so, I replied; for his friends often come and
ask him questions and argue with him; and therefore he is quite at home in
answering.
What followed, Crito, how can I rightly narrate? For not slight is the
task of rehearsing infinite wisdom, and therefore, like the poets, I ought
to commence my relation with an invocation to Memory and the Muses. Now
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: with a subdued light.--Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had been
careful not to apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking his
eyes, "but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went to
Paris and heard what the doctors had pronounced. She immediately
begged to see my nephew, who hardly recognized her; then, like the
noble soul she is, she insisted on devoting herself to giving him such
care as might tend to his recovery. She would have been obliged to do
so if he had been her husband, she said, and could she do less for him
as her lover?
"She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living for two
years."
Louis Lambert |
