| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: "Papa," said Eugenie, "we have decided to take the first man who
offers."
"Ah!" he cried, "that is the bitter fruit of such a system. They want
to make saints, and they make--" he stopped without ending his
sentence.
Often the two girls felt an infinite tenderness in their father's
"Adieu," or in his eyes, when, by chance, he dined at home. They
pitied that father so seldom seen, and love follows often upon pity.
This stern and rigid education was the cause of the marriages of the
two sisters welded together by misfortune, as Rita-Christina by the
hand of Nature. Many men, driven to marriage, prefer a girl taken from
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: as a plaything, an ornament in his house. And that very fact showed me
that the man was square at the base as well as in height," added
Bixiou. "Nucingen makes no bones about admitting that his wife is his
fortune; she is an indispensable chattel, but a wife takes a second
place in the high-pressure life of a political leader and great
capitalist. He once said in my hearing that Bonaparte had blundered
like a bourgeois in his early relations with Josephine; and that after
he had had the spirit to use her as a stepping-stone, he had made
himself ridiculous by trying to make a companion of her."
"Any man of unusual powers is bound to take Oriental views of women,"
said Blondet.
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