| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: table, he went to town earlier than usual. His wife, who read
slowly, was given to talking over what she read, and at present
his first object in life was to postpone the inevitable discussion
of the letters. This instinct of protection in the afternoon, on
his way uptown, guided him to the club in search of a man who
might be persuaded to come out to the country to dine. The only
man in the club was Flamel.
Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily pressing Flamel
to come and dine, felt the full irony of the situation. To use
Flamel as a shield against his wife's scrutiny was only a shade
less humiliating than to reckon on his wife as a defence against
|
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 Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: power of grasping external details so thoroughly that they never
detained me for a moment, and at once I passed beyond and through
them. I could enter into the life of the human creatures whom I
watched, just as the dervish in the /Arabian Nights/ could pass into
any soul or body after pronouncing a certain formula.
If I met a working man and his wife in the streets between eleven
o'clock and midnight on their way home from the Ambigu Comique, I used
to amuse myself by following them from the Boulevard du Pont aux Choux
to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. The good folk would begin by talking
about the play; then from one thing to another they would come to
their own affairs, and the mother would walk on and on, heedless of
|
