| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: another's throats like gladiators. Soon wood for the funeral-piles
failed, the flames were extinguished, every spot was occupied; and
weary from shouting, weakened, tottering, they fell asleep close to
their dead brethren, those who still clung to life full of anxieties,
and the others desiring never to wake again.
In the greyness of the dawn some soldiers appeared on the outskirts of
the Barbarians, and filed past with their helmets raised on the points
of their pikes; they saluted the Mercenaries and asked them whether
they had no messages to send to their native lands.
Others approached, and the Barbarians recognised some of their former
companions.
Salammbo |
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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: made me know the meaning of jealousy, so you need not be surprised by
what I say.--But another mystery which has rent its cloud, and it
seems to me infamous----"
"Go on, go on," said Valerie.
"It is that Crevel, that square lump of flesh and stupidity, is in
love with you, and that you accept his attentions with so good a grace
that the idiot flaunts his passion before everybody."
"Only three! Can you discover no more?" asked Madame Marneffe.
"There may be more!" retorted the Baron.
"If Monsieur Crevel is in love with me, he is in his rights as a man
after all; if I favored his passion, that would indeed be the act of a
|
