| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: powerful anti-narcotics. His struggles to keep awake were awful--alone
with night, silence, Remorse, and Fear, with all the thoughts that
man, instinctively perhaps, has best embodied--obedient thus to a
moral truth as yet devoid of actual proof.
At last this man so powerful, this heart so hardened by political and
commercial life, this genius, obscure in history, succumbed to the
horrors of the torture he had himself created. Maddened by certain
thoughts more agonizing than those he had as yet resisted, he cut his
throat with a razor.
This death coincided, almost, with that of Louis XI. Nothing then
restrained the populace, and Malemaison, that Evil House, was
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: below, so that sometimes the shaft-bow could not be seen. At
times the sledge seemed to stand still and the field to run
backwards. Suddenly the horse stopped abruptly, evidently
aware of something close in front of him. Nikita again sprang
lightly out, throwing down the reins, and went ahead to see
what had brought him to a standstill, but hardly had he made a
step in front of the horse before his feet slipped and he went
rolling down an incline.
'Whoa, whoa, whoa!' he said to himself as he fell, and he tried
to stop his fall but could not, and only stopped when his feet
plunged into a thick layer of snow that had drifted to the
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: forth. Then she plunges into some neo-Christian speech sprinkled with
political notions which is neither Catholic nor Protestant--but moral?
Oh! deuced moral!--in which you may recognize a fag end of every
material woven by modern doctrines, at loggerheads together."
The women could not help laughing at the airs by which Blondet
illustrated his satire.
"This explanation, dear Count Adam," said Blondet, turning to the
Pole, "will have proved to you that the 'perfect lady' represents the
intellectual no less than the political muddle, just as she is
surrounded by the showy and not very lasting products of an industry
which is always aiming at destroying its work in order to replace it
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: same myself."
"And you will give her to me?"
"Yes--with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you as much by
will, and we will start on our new career under the name of a new
firm. We will do good business yet, my boy!" added the old man,
getting up and flourishing his arms. "I tell you, son-in-law, there is
nothing like trade. Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it
are simpletons. To be on the scent of a good bargain, to hold your own
on 'Change, to watch as anxiously as at the gaming-table whether
Etienne and Co. will fail or no, to see a regiment of Guards march
past all dressed in your cloth, to trip your neighbor up--honestly of
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