| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: in spite of their natural fierceness, was mingled confusedly a kind of
good will. The poor Provencal ate his dates, leaning against one of
the palm trees, and casting his eyes alternately on the desert in
quest of some liberator and on his terrible companion to watch her
uncertain clemency.
The panther looked at the place where the date stones fell, and every
time that he threw one down her eyes expressed an incredible mistrust.
She examined the man with an almost commercial prudence. However, this
examination was favorable to him, for when he had finished his meager
meal she licked his boots with her powerful rough tongue, brushing off
with marvelous skill the dust gathered in the creases.
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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 Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: I could see the blood come in her face, and her head fling into the air
like what I had conceived of empresses.
"What brings you to my poor door?" she cried, speaking high through her
nose. "I cannot bar it. The males of my house are dead and buried; I
have neither son nor husband to stand in the gate for me; any beggar
can pluck me by the baird - and a baird there is, and that's the worst
of it yet?" she added partly to herself.
I was extremely put out at this reception, and the last remark, which
seemed like a daft wife's, left me near hand speechless.
"I see I have fallen under your displeasure, ma'am," said I. "Yet I
will still be so bold as ask after Mistress Drummond."
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