| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: itself had come tumbling down.
"I'm dead! The scoundrel has killed me!"
The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the
apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery,
wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern
shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the
Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which
came above the knee.
After a moment's hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
Vermichel, "Here are witnesses."
"Witnesses of what?" said Tonsard.
|
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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: delight the curving sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg
as it hangs for an instant in long fillets and then falls over a
picturesque abatis of noble trees toppled confusedly together,
sometimes upright, sometimes half-sunken beneath the rocks. It may be
that such minds alone can dwell upon the smiling scenes nestling among
the lower hills of Jarvis; where the luscious Northern vegetables
spring up in families, in myriads, where the white birches bend,
graceful as maidens, where colonnades of beeches rear their boles
mossy with the growth of centuries, where shades of green contrast,
and white clouds float amid the blackness of the distant pines, and
tracts of many-tinted crimson and purple shrubs are shaded endlessly;
Seraphita |
