| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: Madame de Chargeboeuf, who was considered by all the Liberal party and
by Madame de Breautey and her aristocratic circle to be far handsomer
than Madame Tiphaine. These two great statesmen of the little
provincial town made everybody believe that the priest was in sympathy
with their ideas; so that before long Provins began to talk of him as
a liberal ecclesiastic. As soon as this news reached the bishop
Monsieur Habert was sent for and admonished to cease his visits to the
Rogrons; but his sister continued to go there. Thus the salon Rogron
became a fixed fact and a constituted power.
Before the year was out political intrigues were not less lively than
the matrimonial schemes of the Rogron salon. While the selfish
|
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 Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: lords for one day, they throw their money on Mondays to the /cabarets/
which gird the town like a belt of mud, haunts of the most shameless
of the daughters of Venus, in which the periodical money of this
people, as ferocious in their pleasures as they are calm at work, is
squandered as it had been at play. For five days, then, there is no
repose for this laborious portion of Paris! It is given up to actions
which make it warped and rough, lean and pale, gush forth with a
thousand fits of creative energy. And then its pleasure, its repose,
are an exhausting debauch, swarthy and black with blows, white with
intoxication, or yellow with indigestion. It lasts but two days, but
it steals to-morrow's bread, the week's soup, the wife's dress, the
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
