| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: his own act and deed, and sinks to some loveless marriage; if by some
incident, hidden in the obscurity of married life, the woman with whom
he hoped to know the same felicity makes it clear that it will never
be revived for him; if, with the sweetness of divine love still on his
lips, he has dealt a deadly wound to /her/, his wife in truth, whom he
forsook for a social chimera,--then he must either die or take refuge
in a materialistic, selfish, and heartless philosophy, from which
impassioned souls shrink in horror.
As for Mme. de Beauseant, she doubtless did not imagine that her
friend's despair could drive him to suicide, when he had drunk deep of
love for nine years. Possibly she may have thought that she alone was
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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 Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: and of himself afterwards. While he served his military
apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to
reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
nation and nation; who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans
of campaign, and combine the science of the tactician with that of the
administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance; the most
boorish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in
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