| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: "Oh, friend!" she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an
involuntary avowal, "when a woman attaches herself for life, think you
she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you
anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I
would willingly confide to you the strange position in which I am at
my age; but what would you think of a woman who could reveal the
secret wounds of her married life? Turenne kept his word to robbers;
do I not owe to my torturers the honor of a Turenne?"
"Have you passed your word to say nothing?"
"Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary to bind me to
secrecy-- You are asking more than my soul! Tyrant! you want me to
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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 Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: asked him, Well, Erasistratus, and what sort of character does he bear in
Sicily?
ERASISTRATUS: He is esteemed to be, and really is, the wickedest of all
the Sicilians and Italians, and even more wicked than he is rich; indeed,
if you were to ask any Sicilian whom he thought to be the worst and the
richest of mankind, you would never hear any one else named.
I reflected that we were speaking, not of trivial matters, but about wealth
and virtue, which are deemed to be of the greatest moment, and I asked
Erasistratus whom he considered the wealthier,--he who was the possessor of
a talent of silver or he who had a field worth two talents?
ERASISTRATUS: The owner of the field.
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