| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: known and loved hitherto into quite a different girl. As for Jack Ryan,
he was as joyous as a lark rising in the first beams of the sun.
He only trusted that his gayety would prove contagious, and enliven his
traveling companions, thus rewarding them for letting him join them.
Nell was pensive and silent.
James Starr had decided, very sensibly, to set off in the evening.
It would be very much better for the girl to pass gradually from
the darkness of night to the full light of day; and that would
in this way be managed, since between midnight and noon she
would experience the successive phases of shade and sunshine,
to which her sight had to get accustomed.
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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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: of luxury and earthly enjoyment, to harden the heart and macerate the
body for the sake of fleeting possessions, as the martyrs once
suffered all things to reach eternal joys, this is now the universal
thought--a thought written everywhere, even in the very laws which ask
of the legislator, "What do you pay?" instead of asking him, "What do
you think?" When this doctrine has passed down from the bourgeoisie to
the populace, where will this country be?
"Madame Grandet, have you done?" asked the old man.
"My friend, I am praying for you."
"Very good! Good-night; to-morrow morning we will have a talk."
The poor woman went to sleep like a schoolboy who, not having learned
 Eugenie Grandet |