| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: over, and fell over her fevered cheeks; then a deep sigh escaped
between her lips. The sudden joy of finding the father's spirit in the
son, who had grown all at once to be a man, almost killed her.
"Angel of heaven," she cried, weeping, "by one word you have effaced
all my sorrows. Ah! I can bear them.--This is my son," she said, "I
bore, I reared this man," and she raised her hands above her, and
clasped them as if in ecstasy, then she lay back on the pillow.
"Mother, your face is growing pale!" cried the lad.
"Some one must go for a priest," she answered, with a dying voice.
Louis wakened Annette, and the terrified old woman hurried to the
parsonage at Saint-Cyr.
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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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: the end of a long narrow table, facing his wife--a
scraggy little woman, with long ringlets and a blue
tooth, who smiled abroad stupidly and looked
frightened when you spoke to her. Between them a
waggling punkah fanned twenty cane-bottomed
chairs and two rows of shiny plates. Three China-
men in white jackets loafed with napkins in their
hands around that desolation. Schomberg's pet
table d'hote was not much of a success that day.
He was feeding himself ferociously and seemed to
overflow with bitterness.
 Falk |