| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: ceeded towards the town, excepting the Weatherbury
men, who as soon as they had seen the judge move
off returned home again to their work.
"Joseph, I seed you squeezing close to the carriage,"
said Coggan, as they walked. "Did ye notice my lord
judge's face?"
"I did." said Poorgrass. "I looked hard at en, as
if I would read his very soul; and there was mercy
in his eyes -- or to speak with the exact truth required
of us at this solemn time, in the eye that was towards
me."
Far From the Madding Crowd |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: not hate. Hatred is a vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all
their meanness, and make it a pretext for sordid tyranny. So beware of
offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity,
because he could make capital of it, but he would be doubly implacable
if you should touch him on the spot so cruelly wounded by Monsieur
Milaud of Nevers, and would make your life unendurable."
Now, at the time when the whole countryside--Nevers and Sancerre, Le
Morvan and Le Berry--was priding itself on Madame de la Baudraye, and
lauding her under the name of Jan Diaz, "little La Baudraye" felt her
glory a mortal blow. He alone knew the secret source of /Paquita la
Sevillane/. When this terrible work was spoken of, everybody said of
The Muse of the Department |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: time, sending provisions across in the morning, and scarcely ever
spent the night there except during the grape harvest; but the English
settled down on Touraine like a cloud of locusts, and La Grenadiere
must, of course, be completed if it was to find tenants. Luckily,
however, this recent appendage is hidden from sight by the first two
trees of a lime-tree avenue planted in a gully below the vineyards.
There are only two acres of vineyard at most, the ground rising at the
back of the house so steeply that it is no very easy matter to
scramble up among the vines. The slope, covered with green trailing
shoots, ends within about five feet of the house wall in a ditch-like
passage always damp and cold and full of strong growing green things,
|
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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: sometimes--/the girl with the golden eyes/! That is the name we have
given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I
have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who
was worth a hundred thousand of her."
"Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl;
she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl
with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
loses itself on her neck."
"Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
