| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Shame!" I cried. "Shame to you, Northmour!"
And, giddy though I still was, I struck him repeatedly upon the
head and shoulders.
He relinquished his grasp, and faced me in the broken moonlight.
"I had you under, and I let you go," said he; "and now you strike
me! Coward!"
"You are the coward," I retorted. "Did she wish your kisses while
she was still sensible of what she wanted? Not she! And now she
may be dying; and you waste this precious time, and abuse her
helplessness. Stand aside, and let me help her."
He confronted me for a moment, white and menacing; then suddenly he
|
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 Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: lawyer, accounted for the existing state of things. The publicity of
his triumph, flaunted by Etienne on the evening of the first
performance, had very plainly shown the lawyer what Lousteau's purpose
was. To Etienne, Madame de la Baudraye was, to use his own phrase, "a
fine feather in his cap." Far from preferring the joys of a shy and
mysterious passion, of hiding such exquisite happiness from the eyes
of the world, he found a vulgar satisfaction in displaying the first
woman of respectability who had ever honored him with her affection.
The Judge, however, was for some time deceived by the attentions which
any man would lavish on any woman in Madame de la Baudraye's
situation, and Lousteau made them doubly charming by the ingratiating
The Muse of the Department |
