| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: right; Vinet had been a true prophet. These things had great influence
on the question of Pierrette's guardianship.
Thus the dreadful martyrdom brutally inflicted on the poor child by
two imbecile tyrants (which led, through its consequences, to the
terrible operation of trepanning, performed by Monsieur Martener under
the advice of Doctor Bianchon),--all this horrible drama reduced to
judicial form was left to float in the vile mess called in legal
parlance the calendar. The case was made to drag through the delays
and the interminable labyrinths of the law, by the shufflings of an
unprincipled lawyer; and during all this time the calumniated girl
languished in the agony of the worst pain known to science.
|
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 Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: bleak realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our
knowledge of the earth’s past. That the antarctic continent was
once temperate and even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and
animal life of which the lichens, marine fauna, arachnida, and
penguins of the northern edge are the only survivals, is a matter
of common information; and we hoped to expand that information
in variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple boring revealed
fossiliferous signs, we would enlarge the aperture by blasting,
in order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.
Our
borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by
At the Mountains of Madness |
