| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the
number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas,
I place the battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as the
Athenians took part in the struggle; they were all united in this greatest
and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore their virtues will be
celebrated in times to come, as they are now celebrated by us. But at a
later period many Hellenic tribes were still on the side of the barbarians,
and there was a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt
upon the Hellenes, and therefore justice requires that we should also make
mention of those who crowned the previous work of our salvation, and drove
and purged away all barbarians from the sea. These were the men who fought
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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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: A hoarse cry, uttered by Genevieve, seemed uttered as a warning to the
unknown woman, who turned suddenly, throwing back her hair from either
side of her face. At this instant the colonel and Monsieur d'Albon
could distinctly see her features; she, herself, perceiving the two
friends, sprang to the iron railing with the lightness and rapidity of
a deer.
"Adieu!" she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, the melody of which
did not convey the slightest feeling or the slightest thought.
Monsieur d'Albon admired the long lashes of her eyelids, the blackness
of her eyebrows, and the dazzling whiteness of a skin devoid of even
the faintest tinge of color. Tiny blue veins alone broke the
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