| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: your shoulders, like the Commendatore's hand on Don Giovanni's neck.
"One evening I felt a shudder; the wind had turned an old rusty
weathercock, and the creaking sounded like a cry from the house, at
the very moment when I was finishing a gloomy drama to account for
this monumental embodiment of woe. I returned to my inn, lost in
gloomy thoughts. When I had supped, the hostess came into my room with
an air of mystery, and said, 'Monsieur, here is Monsieur Regnault.'
" 'Who is Monsieur Regnault?'
" 'What, sir, do you not know Monsieur Regnault?--Well, that's odd,'
said she, leaving the room.
"On a sudden I saw a man appear, tall, slim, dressed in black, hat in
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: reflections chased each other through her mind. She was cut to the
quick; she wished to re-read the letter, and lit a candle; she studied
the sentences so carefully studied when written; and ended by hearing
the wheezing voice of the outer world.
"He is right, and I am wrong," she said to herself. "But who could
ever believe that under the starry mantle of a poet I should find
nothing but one of Moliere's old men?"
When a woman or young girl is taken in the act, "flagrante delicto,"
she conceives a deadly hatred to the witness, the author, or the
object of her fault. And so the true, the single-minded, the untamed
and untamable Modeste conceived within her soul an unquenchable desire
Modeste Mignon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: And as Fettes took the lamp his companion untied the
fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from the head.
The light fell very clear upon the dark, well-moulded
features and smooth-shaven cheeks of a too familiar
countenance, often beheld in dreams of both of these young
men. A wild yell rang up into the night; each leaped from
his own side into the roadway: the lamp fell, broke, and was
extinguished; and the horse, terrified by this unusual
commotion, bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop,
bearing along with it, sole occupant of the gig, the body of
the dead and long-dissected Gray.
|
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 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: and the circumstances, they struck far off to the right,
to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their
way homeward through the woods that adorned the
rearward side of Cardiff Hill.
CHAPTER XXVI
ABOUT noon the next day the boys ar-
rived at the dead tree; they had come
for their tools. Tom was impatient
to go to the haunted house; Huck
was measurably so, also -- but suddenly
said:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
