| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: remain silent, branched off into narratives of my campaigns such as
Goguelat himself might have scrupled to endorse. He visibly thawed
and brightened; drew more near to where I sat; forgot his timidity
so far as to put many questions; and at last, with another blush,
informed me he was himself expecting a commission.
'Well,' said I, 'they are fine troops, your British troops in the
Peninsula. A young gentleman of spirit may well be proud to be
engaged at the head of such soldiers.'
'I know that,' he said; 'I think of nothing else. I think shame to
be dangling here at home and going through with this foolery of
education, while others, no older than myself, are in the field.'
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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 Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: The transient and fortuitous association of these two had about it a
certain air of mystery. On hearing the names announced of Monsieur de
Soulanges and the Comtesse de Vaudremont, a few women sitting by the
wall rose, and men, hurrying in from the side-rooms, pressed forward
to the principal doorway. One of the jesters who are always to be
found in any large assembly said, as the Countess and her escort came
in, that "women had quite as much curiosity about seeing a man who was
faithful to his passion as men had in studying a woman who was
difficult to enthrall."
Though the Comte de Soulanges, a young man of about two-and-thirty,
was endowed with the nervous temperament which in a man gives rise to
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