| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: this!" cried the burgher, kneeling upon his bags of gold.
"The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here," was the doctor's
comment on this appeal.
"She is in heaven," said a voice that seemed to come from the sea.
"Who said that?"
"'Tis the devil!" exclaimed the servant. "He is scoffing at the Virgin
of Antwerp."
"Let us have no more of your Holy Virgin at present," the skipper
cried to the passengers. "Put your hands to the scoops and bail the
water out of the boat.--And the rest of you," he went on, addressing
the sailors, "pull with all your might! Now is the time; in the name
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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 Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: Bulba entered the room with the three Jews.
The Jews again began to talk among themselves in their
incomprehensible tongue. Taras looked hard at each of them. Something
seemed to have moved him deeply; over his rough and stolid countenance
a flame of hope spread, of hope such as sometimes visits a man in the
last depths of his despair; his aged heart began to beat violently as
though he had been a youth.
"Listen, Jews!" said he, and there was a triumphant ring in his words.
"You can do anything in the world, even extract things from the bottom
of the sea; and it has long been a proverb, that a Jew will steal from
himself if he takes a fancy to steal. Set my Ostap at liberty! give
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
