| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: I am, if friends whom we have in all the ministries in Paris warn me
to beware of every woman I meet, and assure me that Fouche has
employed against me a Judith of the streets, it is not unnatural that
my best friends here should think you too beautiful to be an honest
woman."
As he spoke the marquis plunged a glance into Mademoiselle de
Verneuil's eyes. She colored, and was unable to restrain her tears.
"I deserve these insults," she said. "I wish you really thought me
that despicable creature and still loved me; then, indeed, I could no
longer doubt you. I believed in you when you were deceiving me, and
you will not believe me now when I am true. Let us make an end of
 The Chouans |
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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: to want them?" Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts as came into
my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could
not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the
world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces and innumerable
other conveniences. I assured him "that this whole globe of earth
must be at least three times gone round before one of our better
female YAHOOS could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in."
He said "that must needs be a miserable country which cannot
furnish food for its own inhabitants. But what he chiefly
wondered at was, how such vast tracts of ground as I described
should be wholly without fresh water, and the people put to the
 Gulliver's Travels |