| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: side had too often had recourse to their legal advisers, and knew them
too well to try to "draw them out," in lorette language.
Conversation, perfumed with seven cigars, at first was as fantastic as
a kid let loose, but finally it settled down upon the strategy of the
constant war waged in Paris between creditors and debtors.
Now, if you will be so good as to recall the history and antecedents
of the guests, you will know that in all Paris, you could scarcely
find a group of men with more experience in this matter; the
professional men on one hand, and the artists on the other, were
something in the position of magistrates and criminals hobnobbing
together. A set of Bixiou's drawings to illustrate life in the
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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 Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: kept up a dispute as to whether Alice ought to have been
told that this "principal musician" was of her own sex.
It would certainly have been better, at the outset,
he decided; but to mention it now would be to invest the
fact with undue importance. Yes, that was quite clear;
only the clearer it became, from one point of view,
the shadier it waxed from the other. The problem really
disturbed the young minister's mind throughout the meal,
and his abstraction became so marked at last that his wife
commented upon it.
"A penny for your thoughts!" she said, with cheerful briskness.
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
