| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: 'O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,
Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill!
At his own shadow let the thief run mad!
Himself himself seek every hour to kill!
Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill:
For who so base would such an office have
As slanderous deathsman to so base a slave?
The baser is he, coming from a king,
To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
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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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: that were almost black, the furniture of the period of Louis XIV. were
in keeping with Bartolomeo and his wife, personages worthy of
antiquity.
Under the Empire, and during the Hundred Days, while exercising
functions that were liberally rewarded, the old Corsican had
maintained a great establishment, more for the purpose of doing honor
to his office than from any desire to shine himself. His life and that
of his wife were so frugal, so tranquil, that their modest fortune
sufficed for all their wants. To them, their daughter Ginevra was more
precious than the wealth of the whole world. When, therefore, in May,
1814, the Baron di Piombo resigned his office, dismissed his crowd of
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