| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: went on. "I discovered that I was a statesman."
It was so well said that we all uttered an admiring exclamation.
"As I thought over the really cruel vengeance to be taken on a woman,"
said de Marsay, continuing his story, "with infernal ingenuity--for,
as we had loved each other, some terrible and irreparable revenges
were possible--I despised myself, I felt how common I was, I
insensibly formulated a horrible code--that of Indulgence. In taking
vengeance on a woman, do we not in fact admit that there is but one
for us, that we cannot do without her? And, then, is revenge the way
to win her back? If she is not indispensable, if there are other women
in the world, why not grant her the right to change which we assume?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial,
exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a
man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-
meeting or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and
stared at himself with admiration by the coal-porters. Of his
frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an
unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught
up in a smile that could almost be called a snarl, of a sheer, arid
malignity that appalled me and yet put me on my mettle for the
encounter. He looked me up and down, then bowed and took off his
hat to me.
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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 The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: herself from nagging at Madame Thuillier, who did not enter, as she
thought she should have done, into her favorite maxim, "Better be
early than late."
Presently down she went to the Collevilles' to make the same
disturbance; and there she put her veto on the costume, far too
elegant, which Flavie meditated wearing, and told Celeste the hat and
gown she wished her to appear in. As for Colleville, who could not, he
declared, stay away all the morning from his official duties, she
compelled him to put on his dress-suit before he went out, made him
set his watch by hers, and warned him that if he was late no one would
wait for him.
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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 The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: Ere yet the fight began, the old men gazed on their chief, now
seen for the first time after several years, and sadly compared
his altered features and wasted frame with the paragon of
strength and manly beauty which they once remembered. The young
men gazed on his large form and powerful make as upon some
antediluvian giant who had survived the destruction of the Flood.
But the sound of the trumpets on both sides recalled the
attention of every one to the lists, surrounded as they were by
numbers of both nations eager to witness the event of the day.
The combatants met in the lists. It is needless to describe the
struggle: the Scottish champion fell. Foster, placing his foot
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