| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: upon you?"
"That other person is not lost to him; he expects, more than ever, to
find her by the help of a very clever seeker, the mother-superior of a
convent at Arcis."
"Very good; then why employ the delay in holding him at arm's-
length,--a proceeding which will only draw him towards you?"
"My dear moralist, I don't admit your theory in the least. As for
Monsieur de Sallenauve, he will be much too busy with his duties in
the Chamber to think of me. Besides, he is a man who is full of self-
respect; he will be mortified by my manner, which will seem to him
both ungrateful and unjust. If I try to put two feet of distance
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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 The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: it is a woman; by her fierce revolt against being touched by him
when his terror gives way to ardor; by his manly transports of
victory; and by the womanly mixture of rapture and horror with
which she abandons herself to the passion which has seized on
them both, is an experience which it is much better, like the
vast majority of us, never to have passed through, than to allow
it to play more than a recreative holiday part in our lives. It
did not play a very large part in Wagner's own laborious life,
and does not occupy more than two scenes of The Ring. Tristan and
Isolde, wholly devoted to it, is a poem of destruction and death.
The Mastersingers, a work full of health, fun and happiness,
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