| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: victory for the Paladin of the Third Estate; only himself could know
the extent and the bitternest of the failure.
M. d'Ormesson had sprung to the side of his principal.
"You are hurt!" he had cried stupidly.
"It is nothing," said La Tour d'Azyr. "A scratch." But his lip
writhed, and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was full of
blood.
D'Ormesson, a practical man in such matters, produced a linen
kerchief, which he tore quickly into strips to improvise a bandage.
Still Andre-Louis continued to stand there, looking on as if bemused.
He continued so until Le Chapelier touched him on the arm. Then at
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: made to do double duty; and when this aspect of the thing has once
struck you, you cannot look at the picture without seeing all three
citizens simultaneously. The result is doubtless more effective as
a composition than flattering as a likeness.
Far Eastern sculpture, by its secondary importance among Far Eastern
arts, witnesses again to the secondary importance assigned to man at
our mental antipodes. In this art, owing to its necessary
limitations, the representation of nature in its broader sense is
impossible. For in the first place, whatever the subject, it must
be such as it is possible to present in one continuous piece;
disconnected adjuncts, as, for instance, a flock of birds flying,
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