| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: may perhaps shelter the story from criticism.
Mme. la Marquise de Beauseant never left Valleroy after her parting
from M. de Nueil. After his marriage she still continued to live
there, for some inscrutable woman's reason; any woman is at liberty to
assign the one which most appeals to her. Claire de Bourgogne lived in
such complete retirement that none of the servants, save Jacques and
her own woman, ever saw their mistress. She required absolute silence
all about her, and only left her room to go to the chapel on the
Valleroy estate, whither a neighboring priest came to say mass every
morning.
The Comte de Nueil sank a few days after his marriage into something
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: there was room, by lying close, to shoot through underneath, canoe
and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out upon the trunk
itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, when the stream
was too impetuous for this, there was nothing for it but to land
and 'carry over.' This made a fine series of accidents in the
day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves.
Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I was leading by a long
way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the
sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of
its leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another
fallen tree within a stone-cast. I had my backboard down in a
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