| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: uttered], since they had avoided words? For what should they
render satisfaction, since they were so guiltless of any deed
that they could even sell their superfluous righteousness to
other poor sinners? Such saints were also the Pharisees and
scribes in the time of Christ.
Here comes the fiery angel, St. John [Rev. 10], the true
preacher of [true] repentance, and with one [thunderclap and]
bolt hurls both [those selling and those buying works] on one
heap, and says: Repent! Matt. 3, 2. Now, the former [the poor
wretches] imagine: Why, we have repented! The latter [the
rest] say: We need no repentance. John says: Repent ye, both
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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 La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: of Touraine and the cathedral towers aloft in air like a bit of
filigree work. How can one pay for such treasures? Could one ever pay
for the health recovered there under the linden-trees?
In the spring of one of the brightest years of the Restoration, a lady
with her housekeeper and her two children (the oldest a boy thirteen
years old, the youngest apparently about eight) came to Tours to look
for a house. She saw La Grenadiere and took it. Perhaps the distance
from the town was an inducement to live there.
She made a bedroom of the drawing-room, gave the children the two
rooms above, and the housekeeper slept in a closet behind the kitchen.
The dining-room was sitting-room and drawing-room all in one for the
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