| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: his command. My dear fellow, in Paris everything is known, and a man
cannot be a fop there /gratis/. You, who have only one woman, and who,
perhaps, are right to have but one, try to act the fop! . . . You will
not even become ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a
foregone conclusion, one of those men condemned inevitably to do one
and the same thing. You will come to signify /folly/ as inseparably as
M. de La Fayette signifies /America/; M. de Talleyrand, /diplomacy/;
Desaugiers, /song/; M. de Segur, /romance/. If they once forsake their
own line people no longer attach any value to what they do. So,
foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of an incontestable power over
the female folk. A man who is loved by many women passes for having
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Vpon the foot of Motion
Banq. Looke to the Lady:
And when we haue our naked Frailties hid,
That suffer in exposure; let vs meet,
And question this most bloody piece of worke,
To know it further. Feares and scruples shake vs:
In the great Hand of God I stand, and thence,
Against the vndivulg'd pretence, I fight
Of Treasonous Mallice
Macd. And so doe I
All. So all
Macbeth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: the best way of securing him.
The arrest of a debtor is an unheard-of thing in the country, an
abnormal proceeding if ever there was one. Everybody, in the first
place, knows everybody else, and creditor and debtor being bound to
meet each other daily all their lives long, nobody likes to take this
odious course. When a defaulter--to use the provincial term for a
debtor, for they do not mince their words in the provinces when
speaking of this legalized method of helping yourself to another man's
goods--when a defaulter plans a failure on a large scale, he takes
sanctuary in Paris. Paris is a kind of City of Refuge for provincial
bankrupts, an almost impenetrable retreat; the writ of the pursuing
|
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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: small for his lean length, and furbished with tarnished lace.
Dirty cambric cuffs hung at his wrists and on his fingers were
half a dozen and more rings, set with stones that shone, and
glistened, and twinkled in the light of the fire. The hair at
either temple was twisted into a Spanish curl, plastered flat to
the cheek, and a plaited queue hung halfway down his back.
Hiram, speaking never a word, sat motionless, his dull little
eyes traveling slowly up and down and around and around his
stepbrother's person.
Levi did not seem to notice his scrutiny, leaning forward, now
with his palms spread out to the grateful warmth, now rubbing
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
