| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: embellishment to her. Madame de Bonfons (sometimes ironically spoken
of as mademoiselle) inspires for the most part reverential respect:
and yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest emotions, has
been, from first to last, subjected to the calculations of human
selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence upon that hallowed
life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who is all feeling.
"I have none but you to love me," she says to Nanon.
The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families.
She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The
grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the
petty habits of her early life.
Eugenie Grandet |
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 Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: of two great fellows rushing at me with their eyes starting out of their
heads and shouting as they came:
"Kill Umbelazi's white man! Kill! Kill!"
Then, seeing that the matter was urgent and that it was a question of my
life or theirs, I came into action.
In my hand I held a double-barrelled shotgun loaded with what we used to
call "loopers," or B.B. shot, of which but a few went to each charge,
for I had hoped to meet with a small buck on my way to camp. So, as
these soldiers came, I lifted the gun and fired, the right barrel at one
of them and the left barrel at the other, aiming in each case at the
centre of the small dancing shields, which from force of habit they held
Child of Storm |
