| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: wasted necks seeking in the dust for blades of trampled straw. Often
the sentries on vedette upon the terrace would see in the moonlight a
dog belonging to the Barbarians coming to prowl beneath the
entrenchment among the heaps of filth; it would be knocked down with a
stone, and then, after a descent had been effected along the palisades
by means of the straps of a shield, it would be eaten without a word.
Sometimes horrible barkings would be heard and the man would not come
up again. Three phalangites, in the fourth dilochia of the twelfth
syntagmata, killed one another with knives in a dispute about a rat.
All regretted their families, and their houses; the poor their hive-
shaped huts, with the shells on the threshold and the hanging net, and
 Salammbo |
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 Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: I know that you have no love for The Sheik, your father.
Neither have I. I will not betray you. Let me see the picture."
Friendless among cruel enemies, Meriem clutched at the straw
that Abdul Kamak held out to her. Perhaps in him she might
find the friend she needed. Anyway he had seen the picture and
if he was not a friend he could tell The Sheik about it and it
would be taken away from her. So she might as well grant his
request and hope that he had spoken fairly, and would deal fairly.
She drew the photograph from its hiding place and handed it to him.
Abdul Kamak examined it carefully, comparing it, feature by feature
with the girl sitting on the ground looking up into his face.
 The Son of Tarzan |