| 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: handed round his snuff-box: "Who can do the honors of Saumur for
monsieur so well as madame?"
"Ah! what do you mean by that, monsieur l'abbe?" demanded Monsieur des
Grassins.
"I mean it in the best possible sense for you, for madame, for the
town of Saumur, and for monsieur," said the wily old man, turning to
Charles.
The Abbe Cruchot had guessed the conversation between Charles and
Madame des Grassins without seeming to pay attention to it.
"Monsieur," said Adolphe to Charles with an air which he tried to make
free and easy, "I don't know whether you remember me, but I had the
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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: rapidity of what the head's-man calls the "mechanism." Molineux
granted neither grace nor time; his heart was a callus in the
direction of a lease.
"I will lend you the money if you want it," he would say to a man he
thought solvent, "but pay my rent; all delays carry with them a loss
of interest for which the law does not indemnify us."
After long study of the caprices and capers of tenants who persisted,
after the fashion of dynasties, in upsetting the arrangements of their
predecessors, he had drawn up a charter of his own and followed it
religiously. In accordance therewith, the old fellow made no repairs:
no chimney ever smoked, the stairs were clean, the ceilings white, the
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
