| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: of the prizes. But, poor fellow! I excuse him, for I now learn that he
never knew his mother. It was Dorlange, the poor abandoned child at
Tours, the friend of Marie-Gaston.
From 1827 to 1831 the two friends were inseparable. Dorlange,
regularly supplied with means, was a sort of Marquis d'Aligre; Gaston,
on the contrary, was reduced to his own resources for a living, and
would have lived a life of extreme poverty had it not been for his
friend. But where friends love each other--and the situation is more
rare than people imagine--all on one side and nothing on the other is
a determining cause for association. So, without any reckoning between
them, our two pigeons held in common their purse, their earnings,
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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 The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: he can neither make a decent sword himself nor even set one to
rights when it is damaged. Reckless of the remonstrances of the
scandalized professor, he seizes a file, and in a few moments
utterly destroys the fragments of the sword by rasping them into
a heap of steel filings. Then he puts the filings into a
crucible; buries it in the coals; and sets to at the bellows with
the shouting exultation of the anarchist who destroys only to
clear the ground for creation. When the steel is melted he runs
it into a mould; and lo! a sword-blade in the rough. Mimmy,
amazed at the success of this violation of all the rules of his
craft, hails Siegfried as the mightiest of smiths, professing
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