| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: smoke through the cracks of her brown face.
"Read it, mademoiselle!"
"Ah, Nanon, why did he return to Paris? He went from Saumur."
"Read it, and you'll find out."
Eugenie opened the letter with trembling fingers. A cheque on the
house of "Madame des Grassins and Coret, of Saumur," fluttered down.
Nanon picked it up.
My dear Cousin,--
"No longer 'Eugenie,'" she thought, and her heart quailed.
You--
"He once said 'thou.'" She folded her arms and dared not read another
Eugenie Grandet |
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows;
and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of
Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I began to
think of him with sympathy.
Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into
another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and
darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered
the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward gave me no
trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence I had occasion to
remark in her. At the same time, the wind freshened into half a
gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came flying up out of the
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