| 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: actually an instigator of the business. Andre-Louis may therefore
have felt a justifiable satisfaction in offering up the Chevalier's
life to the Manes of his murdered friend. He may have viewed it as
an act of common justice not to be procured by any other means.
Also it is to be remembered that Chabrillane had gone confidently
to the meeting, conceiving that he, a practised ferailleur, had to
deal with a bourgeois utterly unskilled in swordsmanship. Morally,
then, he was little better than a murderer, and that he should have
tumbled into the pit he conceived that he dug for Andre-Louis was
a poetic retribution. Yet, notwithstanding all this, I should find
the cynical note on which Andre-Louis announced the issue to the
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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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: of age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other."
"Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits," replied
the princess. "We are like those poor young men who play with a
toothpick to pretend they have dined."
"Well, at any rate, here we are!" said Madame d'Espard, with
coquettish grace, and a charming gesture of well-informed innocence;
"and, it seems to me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our
revenge."
"When you told me, the other day, that Beatrix had gone off with
Conti, I thought of it all night long," said the princess, after a
pause. "I suppose there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her
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