| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: with the other. He harangued the two women ex-
traordinarily, with much of his shirt hanging out of
his waistbelt, stamping his foot, turning from one
to the other, sometimes throwing both his arms to-
gether, straight up above his rumpled hair, and
keeping them in that position while he uttered a
passage of loud denunciation; at others folding
them tight across his breast--and then he hissed
with indignation, elevating his shoulders and pro-
truding his head. The girl was crying.
She had not changed her attitude. From her
 Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: Catholic feels for the Eucharist. Honest Wirth was a kind of Gaspard,
a beer-drinking German sheathing his cunning in good-nature, much as a
cardinal in the Middle Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a
husband for Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid
with the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacien's geniality, that most
adhesive of all known varieties of bird-lime.
"Mme. d'Aldrigger was radically 'improper.' She thought love the most
natural thing imaginable. When Isaure and Malvina went out together to
the Champs Elysees or the Tuileries, where they were sure to meet the
young men of their set, she would simply say, 'A pleasant time to you,
dear girls.' Their friends among men, the only persons who might have
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