The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker
went on. "There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring
hidden by the griffin, and it will fly open."
"I have found it, father."
"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."
"I have it."
"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old
man felt how very near the end had come, and summoned all his
dying strength to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub
me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again."
"There is very little of it," his son remarked.
|
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to
the castle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her,
Anne held back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One
day, in Yves de Cornault's absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol
with a troop of performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and
cleverest, a white dog with a feathery coat and one blue and one
brown eye. It seemed to have been ill-treated by the gypsies,
and clung to her plaintively when she took it from them. That
evening her husband came back, and when she went to bed she found
the dog strangled on her pillow.
After that she said to herself that she would never have another
|