| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: detained him a while behind his companions; and again he went to
examine the earth of a badger, which carriued him on a good way
before them.
The conversation betwixt the Master and his sister,
meanwhile, took an interesting, and almost a confidential, turn.
She could not help mentioning her sense of the pain he must feel
in visiting scenes so well known to him, bearing now an aspect so
different; and so gently was her sympathy expressed, that
Ravenswood felt it for a moment as a full requital of all his
misfortunes. Some such sentiment escaped him, which Lucy heard
with more of confusion than displeasure; and she may be forgiven
The Bride of Lammermoor |
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 Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: services, only too happy to be taken for the carpet-knights of this
sovereign lady, by strangers admitted to spend an evening or two at La
Baudraye.
"Madame de la Baudraye is a fruit that must be left to ripen." This
was the opinion of Monsieur Gravier, who was waiting.
As to the lawyer, he wrote letters four pages long, to which Dinah
replied in soothing speech as she walked, leaning on his arm, round
and round the lawn after dinner.
Madame de la Baudraye, thus guarded by three passions, and always
under the eye of her pious mother, escaped the malignity of slander.
It was so evident to all Sancerre that no two of these three men would
The Muse of the Department |
