| 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: more faithful in its service than he in his duty to Bartolommeo--
he, a man with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within him
that we call a heart.
Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in
the Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the
mysterious liquid.
Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the
gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and
light footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band
of revelers struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came
the Prince and Don Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the
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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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the
Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious
folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has
been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the
dying.
The Deil's Hags was the old name. But the place is now called Francie's
Cairn. For a while it was told that Francie walked. Aggic Hogg met him
in the gloaming by the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with chattering
teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any one
could have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitiful
entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious
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