| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: arms, but he found them separated. The purest love demands its
mystery.
"This is not right, my child," he said to Gabrielle, "to stay so late,
and have no lights."
"Why wrong?" she said; "you know we love each other, and he is master
of the castle."
"My children," said Beauvouloir, "if you love each other, your
happiness requires that you should marry and pass your lives together;
but your marriage depends on the will of monseigneur the duke--"
"My father has promised to gratify all my wishes," cried Etienne
eagerly, interrupting Beauvouloir.
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps
still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived:
the ESSAIS of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture
of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of
to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of
heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have
their 'linen decencies' and excited orthodoxies fluttered,
and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that
these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground
of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they
will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen
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