| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he suggests that I should get
up and go into the woods."
"The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a small set of rooms that
his bedroom and his sitting-room are not enough, and that he must run
about? But it is just to give you cold that the wretch proposes such
expeditions. He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man
settled in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a
warlock?"
"But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he must have
excitement to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes which----"
"I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!" cried Madame Guillaume,
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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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: he asked folk what he had better do. 'What you had better do?' they
said. 'Well the Government is not here--it is in Paris, and the troops
have not yet returned from the war; but there is a TEMPORARY
Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can do for
you.' 'All right!' he said. 'I will go and tell the Commission that I
have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.' And he
got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand (since
the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden leg
and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he asked
where the President lived, and was told that his house was in
Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant's hut,
Dead Souls |
