| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: forgiveness which I may not grant; to mark the writhing of the
assassin and the last shriek of his victim; to listen to appalling
noises and fearful silence, the silence of a father devouring his dead
sons; to wonder at the laughter of the damned; to look for some human
form among the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words
such as living men may not hear without dying; to call perpetually on
the dead, and always to accuse and condemn!--Is that living?"
"Cease!" cried Godefroid; "I cannot see you or hear you any further!
My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You light a fire within me which
consumes me."
"And yet I must go on!" said the senior, waving his hand with a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained
plaster of Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have
a great effect on the young: I thought that a fairer era of life
was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and
pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils. My faculties, roused by
the change of scene, the new field offered to hope, seemed all
astir. I cannot precisely define what they expected, but it was
something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that month, but at an
indefinite future period.
I rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain--for I had
no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity--I
 Jane Eyre |