| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: before a figure into which his genius has conveyed a world of
sentiment. If you recall the pure, wild fragrance of the heath we
gathered on our return from the Villa Diodati, the flower whose tints
of black and rose you praised so warmly, you can fancy how this woman
could be elegant though remote from the social world, natural in
expression, fastidious in all things which became part of herself,--in
short, like the heath of mingled colors. Her body had the freshness we
admire in the unfolding leaf; her spirit the clear conciseness of the
aboriginal mind; she was a child by feeling, grave through suffering,
the mistress of a household, yet a maiden too. Therefore she charmed
artlessly and unconsciously, by her way of sitting down or rising, of
The Lily of the Valley |
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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: You would avenge your father's bloody murder;
Did you not say that?
GUIDO
No, my lord, I said
I was resolved not to kill the Duke.
MORANZONE
You said not that; it is my senses mock me;
Or else this midnight air o'ercharged with storm
Alters your message in the giving it.
GUIDO
Nay, you heard rightly; I'll not kill this man.
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