| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: and he felt no shame whatever in his untidiness; in fact, he was so
accustomed to it that he would probably have denied its existence. The
incessant smoking of a stout German pipe had spread upon the ceiling
and over a wretched wall-paper, scratched and defaced by the cat, a
yellowish tinge. The cat, a magnificently long-furred, fluffy animal,
the envy of all portresses, presided there like the mistress of the
house, grave and sedate, and without anxieties. On the top of an
excellent Viennese piano he sat majestically, and cast upon the
countess, as she entered, that coldly gracious look which a woman,
surprised by the beauty of another woman, might have given. He did not
move, and merely waved the two silver threads of his right whisker as
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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 The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: love was hopeless. She might refuse to wed the king; but
that she should ever wed another while the king lived was
impossible, unless Leopold saw fit to release her from her
betrothal to him and sanction her marriage to another. That
he ever would do this was to those who knew him not even
remotely possible.
He loved Emma von der Tann and he hated Barney
Custer--hated him with a jealous hatred that was almost
fanatic in its intensity. And even that the Princess Emma
von der Tann would wed him were she free to wed was a
question that was not at all clear in the mind of Barney
The Mad King |
