| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: to swallow - and not intensely to taste - every offered spoonful
of the revelation. It had been his odd fortune to blow upon the
deep waters, to make them surge and break in waves of strange
eloquence. But how couldn't he give out a passionate contradiction
of his host's last extravagance, how couldn't he enumerate to him
the parts of his work he loved, the splendid things he had found in
it, beyond the compass of any other writer of the day? St. George
listened a while, courteously; then he said, laying his hand on his
visitor's: "That's all very well; and if your idea's to do nothing
better there's no reason you shouldn't have as many good things as
I - as many human and material appendages, as many sons or
|
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 Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: "She is in love with Albert Savarus!" thought the Vicar-General.
He rose and took leave. He was going towards the door when, in the
next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie, who said:
"Monsieur de Grancey, it was from Albert!"
"How do you know that it was his writing, to recognize it from so
far?"
The girl's reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impatience and
rage, seemed to the Abbe sublime.
"I love him!--What is the matter?" she said after a pause.
"He gives up the election."
Rosalie put her finger to her lip.
Albert Savarus |
