| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: vermilion lacquer studded with brass peacocks. Across the windows
hung thin curtains of muslin embroidered with beetles' wings and
with tiny seed-pearls, and as it passed by a pale-faced Circassian
looked out and smiled at me. I followed behind, and the negroes
hurried their steps and scowled. But I did not care. I felt a
great curiosity come over me.
'At last they stopped at a square white house. There were no
windows to it, only a little door like the door of a tomb. They
set down the palanquin and knocked three times with a copper
hammer. An Armenian in a caftan of green leather peered through
the wicket, and when he saw them he opened, and spread a carpet on
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: that lies at the foot of the upper wall is almost hidden by the trees
that grow on the top of the lower, upon which it lies. The view of the
river widens out before you at every step as you climb to the house.
At the end you come to a second gateway, a Gothic archway covered with
simple ornament, now crumbling into ruin and overgrown with
wildflowers--moss and ivy, wallflowers and pellitory. Every stone wall
on the hillside is decked with this ineradicable plant-life, which
springs up along the cracks afresh with new wreaths for every time of
year.
The worm-eaten gate gives into a little garden, a strip of turf, a few
trees, and a wilderness of flowers and rose bushes--a garden won from
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