| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: love each other tenderly. We live in days when sisters married into
such antagonist spheres can very well not love each other, and
therefore the historian is bound to relate the reasons of this tender
affection, preserved without spot or jar in spite of their husbands'
contempt for each other and their own social disunion. A rapid glance
at their childhood will explain the situation.
Brought up in a gloomy house in the Marais, by a woman of narrow mind,
a "devote" who, being sustained by a sense of duty (sacred phrase!),
had fulfilled her tasks as a mother religiously, Marie-Angelique and
Marie Eugenie de Granville reached the period of their marriage--the
first at eighteen, the second at twenty years of age--without ever
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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 A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: dine at the first restauranteur's whose shop caught our eye. At
dessert a bottle of champagne completely refreshed and brightened up
the memories of this odd old soldier. He told me his story, and I saw
that he was right when he exclaimed, 'Well known.' "
When she got home, she teased me to that extent, was so charming, and
made so many promises, that I consented to communicate to her the
confidences of the old soldier. Next day she received the following
episode of an epic which one might call "The French in Egypt."
During the expedition in Upper Egypt under General Desaix, a Provencal
soldier fell into the hands of the Maugrabins, and was taken by these
Arabs into the deserts beyond the falls of the Nile.
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