| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr - with M.
Saint-Yves.'
But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix's rooms, and after I
had dutifully corrected his exercise - 'I compliment you on your
taste,' said he to me.
'I beg your pardon?' said I.
'Oh no, I beg yours,' said he. 'You understand me perfectly, just
as I do you.'
I murmured something about enigmas.
'Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?' said he, leaning
back. 'That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: of a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying
shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the
neighborhood she was known as the "portress nun." Her speech was curt,
and her movements had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye,
with a gleam in it like a cat's, seemed to spite the world because she
was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like her younger
sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had reached the age of
eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the graceless effect which her
likeness to her mother sometimes gave to her features, but maternal
austerity had endowed her with two great qualities which made up for
everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who
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