| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: wary of human beings, the little provincial trader, had himself become
entangled in the first conspiracy attempted against the Bourbons after
the Hundred Days. Gaudissart, to whom the open firmament of heaven was
indispensable, found himself shut up in prison, under the weight of an
accusation for a capital offence. Popinot the judge, who presided at
the trial, released him on the ground that it was nothing worse than
his imprudent folly which had mixed him up in the affair. A judge
anxious to please the powers in office, or a rabid royalist, would
have sent the luckless traveller to the scaffold. Gaudissart, who
believed he owed his life to the judge, cherished the grief of being
unable to make his savior any other return than that of sterile
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: England's.
"England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generations and
it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on an
individual. Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards an
act of any country. A responsible nation must bear the praise or odium
that attaches to any national action. If England has experienced a change
of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic--as wanton a
steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended with sufficient
brutality for all practical purposes....
"She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single good turn
that was not dictated by selfish policy or jealousy of others. She has
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