| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: lives, and exchanged their sufferings. As Agathe listened to the last
echoes of a soul that had missed its destiny, and felt the sufferings
of a heart, essentially generous and charitable, whose charity and
generosity could never be exercised, she realized the immensity of the
desert in which the powers of this noble, unrecognized soul had been
wasted, and knew that she herself, with the little joys and interests
of her city life relieving the bitter trials sent from God, was not
the most unhappy of the two.
"You who are so pious," she said, "explain to me my shortcomings; tell
me what it is that God is punishing in me."
"He is preparing us, my child," answered the old woman, "for the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: I saw the clouds collecting on that stormy brow. I lived in a
perpetual "qui-vive." I fell under the dominion of that man; and the
sufferings I endured taught me to understand those of Madame de
Mortsauf. We began by exchanging looks of comprehension; tried by the
same fire, how many discoveries I made during those first forty days!
--of actual bitterness, of tacit joys, of hopes alternately submerged
and buoyant. One evening I found her pensively watching a sunset which
reddened the summits with so ravishing a glow that it was impossible
not to listen to that voice of the eternal Song of Songs by which
Nature herself bids all her creatures love. Did the lost illusions of
her girlhood return to her? Did the woman suffer from an inward
The Lily of the Valley |
