| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: without being noticed by the castle retinue, at the little dwelling on
the seashore, so long occupied by the hated son, where Bertrand, the
only person the doctor had taken into his confidence, awaited them.
The old retainer helped the nurse and valet to unload the horses and
carry in the baggage, and otherwise establish the daughter of
Beauvouloir in Etienne's former abode. When Bertrand saw Gabrielle, he
was amazed.
"I seem to see madame!" he cried. "She is slim and willowy like her;
she has madame's coloring and the same fair hair. The old duke will
surely love her."
"God grant it!" said Beauvouloir. "But will he acknowledge his own
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties
to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past
midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to
meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra
gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers
and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer
in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back
door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the
kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an
hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's
 The Great Gatsby |