| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: with horrible resignation. Then the major and the grenadier, the
general and his wife, remained almost alone on the river bank, a few
steps from the spot where the bridge had been. They stood there, with
dry eyes, silent, surrounded by heaps of dead. A few sound soldiers, a
few officers to whom the emergency had restored their natural energy,
were near them. This group consisted of some fifty men in all. The
major noticed at a distance of some two hundred yards the remains of
another bridge intended for carriages and destroyed the day before.
"Let us make a raft!" he cried.
He had hardly uttered the words before the whole group rushed to the
ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood
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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 Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: house other than some half-ruined caserio in her native hills.
I pointed out to her that this was not a matter of splendour or
comfort but of "convenances." She pricked up her ears at that word
which probably she had never heard before; but with woman's uncanny
intuition I believe she understood perfectly what I meant. Her air
of saintly patience became so pronounced that with my own poor
intuition I perceived that she was raging at me inwardly. Her
weather-tanned complexion, already affected by her confined life,
took on an extraordinary clayey aspect which reminded me of a
strange head painted by El Greco which my friend Prax had hung on
one of his walls and used to rail at; yet not without a certain
 The Arrow of Gold |