| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: and fixing it upon Porthos, he contented himself with saying,
"Monsieur our cousin will do us the favor of dining with us
once before his departure for the campaign, will he not,
Madame Coquenard?"
This time Porthos received the blow right in his stomach,
and felt it. It appeared likewise that Mme. Coquenard was
not less affected by it on her part, for she added, "My
cousin will not return if he finds that we do not treat him
kindly; but otherwise he has so little time to pass in Paris,
and consequently to spare to us, that we must entreat him to
give us every instant he can call his own previous to his
The Three Musketeers |
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 Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: most unexpected manner. Each time, a radius or spoke is laid,
here, there, or elsewhere, in what looks like mad disorder.
The operation is so erratically conducted that it takes the most
unremitting attention to follow it at all. The Spider reaches the
margin of the area by one of the spokes already placed. She goes
along this margin for some distance from the point at which she
landed, fixes her thread to the frame and returns to the centre by
the same road which she has just taken.
The thread obtained on the way in a broken line, partly on the
radius and partly on the frame, is too long for the exact distance
between the circumference and the central point. On returning to
The Life of the Spider |
