| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: followed it was more dangerous.
But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage
law might be said to be the epoque civile of this sentimental
warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the
epoque religieuse had also its crisis and consequent decline of
severity.
Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M.
l'Abbe Gondrand, the Duchess's spiritual director, established in
an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director
might be expected to look while digesting his dinner and the
charming sins of his penitent. In the ecclesiastic's bearing
|
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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: me more determined to persevere.
The long borders, where the rockets were, are looking dreadful.
The rockets have done flowering, and, after the manner of rockets:
in other walks of life, have degenerated into sticks;
and nothing else in those borders intends to bloom this summer.
The giant poppies I had planted out in them in April have either
died off or remained quite small, and so have the columbines;
here and there a delphinium droops unwillingly, and that is all.
I suppose poppies cannot stand being moved, or perhaps they were not
watered enough at the time of transplanting; anyhow, those borders
are going to be sown to-morrow with more poppies for next year;
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
