| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: ways of attracting and winning a woman's love, but in my own heart
I know raptures of adoration of her. I am irresistibly drawn to
you by the great happiness that I feel through you; my thoughts
turn to you with the selfish instinct which bids us draw nearer to
the fire of life when we find it. I do not imagine that I am
worthy of you; it seems impossible that I, young, ignorant, and
shy, could bring you one-thousandth part of the happiness that I
drink in at the sound of your voice and the sight of you. For me
you are the only woman in the world. I cannot imagine life without
you, so I have made up my mind to leave France, and to risk my
life till I lose it in some desperate enterprise, in the Indies,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: that great man's policy.
By now Sally came running back, very excited and very eager.
The joyous company in the coffee-room had heard nothing of the noise
outside, but she had spied a dripping horse and rider who had stopped
at the door of "The Fisherman's Rest," and while the stable boy ran
forward to take charge of the horse, pretty Miss Sally went to the
front door to greet the welcome visitor.
"I think I see'd my Lord Antony's horse out in the yard,
father," she said, as she ran across the coffee-room.
But already the door had been thrown open from outside, and the
next moment an arm, covered in drab cloth and dripping with the heavy
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: I'll speak as truly to you as if these were my dying words.
Though my husband told you some of our troubles, he didn't
mention the greatest, and that which makes all the rest so hard
to bear. If you and your sweetheart marry, you'll be kind and
pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that's the
case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he'll grow gloomy,
rough, and hard to please, and you'll be peevish, and full of
little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside,
when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so
your love will wear away by little and little, and leave you
miserable at last. It has been so with us; and yet my husband and
The Snow Image |
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 Camille by Alexandre Dumas: gone."
"And you have never seen him since?"
"Never."
I, too, had not seen Armand again. I was beginning to ask myself
if, when he had come to see me, the recent news of Marguerite's
death had not exaggerated his former love, and consequently his
sorrow, and I said to myself that perhaps he had already
forgotten the dead woman, and along with her his promise to come
and see me again. This supposition would have seemed probable
enough in most instances, but in Armand's despair there had been
an accent of real sincerity, and, going from one extreme to
Camille |
