| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: into the sea! Why? I don't know why,--little childish troubles, but
very keen, though they are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at
night as one would kiss a mother for the last time, saying in my
heart: 'To-morrow I will kill myself.' But I do not die. Suicides go
to hell, you know, and I am so afraid of hell that I resign myself to
live, to get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and work the
same hours, and do the same things. I am not so weary of it, but I
suffer--And yet, my father and mother adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am
bad; I say so to my confessor."
"Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?"
"Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen 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 Gambara by Honore de Balzac: husband. You asked yourself whether you had not gone beyond the duty
of a wife in keeping yourself wholly for a man who was bound up in his
science. Marianna, leave your hand in mine; all I have said is true.
And you looked about you--but now you were in Paris, not in Italy,
where men know how to love----"
"Oh! Let me finish the tale," cried Marianna. "I would rather say
things myself. I will be honest; I feel that I am speaking to my
truest friend. Yes, I was in Paris when all you have expressed so
clearly took place in my mind; but when I saw you I was saved, for I
had never met with the love I had dreamed of from my childhood. My
poor dress and my dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of men of
Gambara |
