| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: smooth, deliberate, and complimentary.
Within three weeks of their introduction, at his fourth dinner there,
Felicie Cardot, who had been watching Lousteau out of the corner of
her eye, carried him a cup of coffee where he stood in the window
recess, and said in a low voice, with tears in her eyes:
"I will devote my whole life, monsieur, to thanking you for your
sacrifice in favor of a poor girl----"
Lousteau was touched; there was so much expression in her look, her
accent, her attitude. "She would make a good man happy," thought he,
pressing her hand in reply.
Madame Cardot looked upon her son-in-law as a man with a future before
The Muse of the Department |
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 Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: then or are you lying now?" No! the thought of such a scene was
not to be borne. He had sat down appalled, thinking: "What shall
I do now?"
His courage had oozed out of him. Speaking the truth meant the
Moorsoms going away at once - while it seemed to him that he would
give the last shred of his rectitude to secure a day more of her
company. He sat on - silent. Slowly, from confused sensations,
from his talk with the professor, the manner of the girl herself,
the intoxicating familiarity of her sudden hand-clasp, there had
come to him a half glimmer of hope. The other man was dead. Then!
. . . Madness, of course - but he could not give it up. He had
Within the Tides |
