| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: one life, a life of close sympathy. If Mme. Willemsens was silent in
the morning, Louis and Marie would not speak, respecting everything in
her, even those thoughts which they did not share. But the older boy,
with a precocious power of thought, would not rest satisfied with his
mother's assertion that she was perfectly well. He scanned her face
with uneasy forebodings; the exact danger he did not know, but dimly
he felt it threatening in those purple rings about her eyes, in the
deepening hollows under them, and the feverish red that deepened in
her face. If Marie's play began to tire her, his sensitive tact was
quick to discover this, and he would call to his brother:
"Come, Marie! let us run in to breakfast, I am hungry!"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: me, that had laid in little or nothing but biscuit bread and ship beer,
and that he had bought everything else almost for them. I asked him
if there was any more ships that had separated themselves as those
had done. He told me yes, all the way up from the point, right against
Greenwich, to within the shore of Limehouse and Redriff, all the ships
that could have room rid two and two in the middle of the stream, and
that some of them had several families on board. I asked him if the
distemper had not reached them. He said he believed it had not,
except two or three ships whose people had not been so watchful to
keep the seamen from going on shore as others had been, and he said
it was a very fine sight to see how the ships lay up the Pool.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: expect from the beginning. What made her set her cap at Sir
Philip? He would never have looked at her if she had not thrown
herself at his head, with her poor ten thousand pounds. I am
sure, if it is money he wanted, she spoiled his market. I know
where Sir Philip could have done much better. And then, if she
WOULD have the man, could not she try to make him more
comfortable at home, and have his friends oftener, and not plague
him with the squalling children, and take care all was handsome
and in good style about the house? I declare I think Sir Philip
would have made a very domestic man, with a woman who knew how to
manage him."
|
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 A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: too well to try to "draw them out," in lorette language.
Conversation, perfumed with seven cigars, at first was as fantastic as
a kid let loose, but finally it settled down upon the strategy of the
constant war waged in Paris between creditors and debtors.
Now, if you will be so good as to recall the history and antecedents
of the guests, you will know that in all Paris, you could scarcely
find a group of men with more experience in this matter; the
professional men on one hand, and the artists on the other, were
something in the position of magistrates and criminals hobnobbing
together. A set of Bixiou's drawings to illustrate life in the
debtors' prison, led the conversation to take this particular turn;
|
