| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: me all about it."
Massimilla turned pale, but a caress from Emilio reassured her.
"Stay with me all day; we will go to the opera together. We will not
set out for Friuli; your presence will no doubt enable me to endure
Cataneo's," said Massimilla.
Though this would be torment to her lover's soul, he consented with
apparent joy.
If anything can give us a foretaste of what the damned will suffer on
finding themselves so unworthy of God, is it not the state of a young
man, as yet unpolluted, in the presence of a mistress he reveres,
while he still feels on his lips the taste of infidelity, and brings
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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 Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: tremble but his thin face was pale - pale as that face which looked
up at him out of one of the coffins. The lid of the coffin stood
up against the wall and Muller saw that there were several other
empty ones further on, waiting for their silent occupants.
The body in the open coffin before which Muller stood was the body
of the man who had been missing since the day previous. He lay
there quite peacefully, his hands crossed over his breast, his eyes
closed, a line of pain about his lips. In the crossed fingers was
a little bunch of dark yellow roses. At the first glance one might
almost have thought that loving hands had laid the old pastor in his
coffin. But the red stain on the white cloth about his throat, and
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