| 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: This view, which was more or less correct, kept them from visiting at
La Baudraye. Dinah, attainted and convicted of pedantry, because she
spoke grammatically, was nicknamed the Sappho of Saint-Satur. At last
everybody made insolent game of the great qualities of the woman who
had thus roused the enmity of the ladies of Sancerre. And they ended
by denying a superiority--after all, merely comparative!--which
emphasized their ignorance, and did not forgive it. Where the whole
population is hunch-backed, a straight shape is the monstrosity; Dinah
was regarded as monstrous and dangerous, and she found herself in a
desert.
Astonished at seeing the women of the neighborhood only at long
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: jaunty in demeanor.
"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you,
as the bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler
either. And you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold
it through him, too?"
"Yes," said Granice wearily.
"Who bought it, do you know?"
Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I
sold it back to him three months later."
"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That
kind of business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it."
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