| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: of land at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as
to be out of the way of drifting logs that would no doubt strand
on the point during the freshet. Mahmat walked through the wet
grass saying bourrouh, and cursing softly to himself the hard
necessities of active life that drove him from his warm couch
into the cold of the morning. A glance showed him that his house
was still there, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in
hauling it out of harm's way, for the increasing light showed him
a confused wrack of drift-logs, half-stranded on the muddy flat,
interlocked into a shapeless raft by their branches, tossing to
and fro and grinding together in the eddy caused by the meeting
Almayer's Folly |
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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is
alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a surgeon or
a physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and
diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant
pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might
have been no less great as a minister than he was as a surgeon.
Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting,
because the answer is to be found at the end of the narrative,
and will avenge him for some foolish charges.
Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was
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