| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: "Afterwards," he answered quickly. "A cursed gutta serena."
"Venice is a fine city; I have always had a fancy to go there."
The old man's face lighted up, the wrinkles began to work, he was
violently excited.
"If I went with you, you would not lose your time," he said.
"Don't talk about Venice to our Doge," put in the fiddle, "or you will
start him off, and he has stowed away a couple of bottles as it is--
has the prince!"
"Come, strike up, Daddy Canard!" added the flageolet, and the three
began to play. But while they executed the four figures of a square
dance, the Venetian was scenting my thoughts; he guessed the great
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: as thought follows thought. He will not relinquish the subject as
long as a hope exists of throwing more light upon it. He knows full
well the anomalous nature of the conclusion to which his experiments
lead him. But experiment to him is final, and he will not shrink
from the conclusion. 'This force,' he says, 'appears to me to be
very strange and striking in its character. It is not polar, for
there is no attraction or repulsion.' And then, as if startled by
his own utterance, he asks--'What is the nature of the mechanical
force which turns the crystal round, and makes it affect a magnet?'...
'I do not remember,' he continues 'heretofore such a case of force
as the present one, where a body is brought into position only,
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