| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: Guillaume's vapid morality. Strange are the results of the false
positions into which we may be brought by the slightest mistake in the
conduct of life! Augustine was like an Alpine cowherd surprised by an
avalanche; if he hesitates, if he listens to the shouts of his
comrades, he is almost certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart
steels itself or breaks.
Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such agitation as it is
difficult to describe. Her conversation with the Duchesse de
Carigliano had roused in her mind a crowd of contradictory thoughts.
Like the sheep in the fable, full of courage in the wolf's absence,
she preached to herself, and laid down admirable plans of conduct; she
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . .
. . It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to
you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you,
and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and
stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your
imaginations stoop . . . NO; YOU would not have me do that?"
A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left
the thing a question.
"I wish," she said, "sometimes--" She paused.
"Yes?" he said, a little apprehensively.
"I wish sometimes--you would not talk like that."
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