| 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: who have known the world only to acquire its suspiciousness, he feared
betrayal; she lived in solitude and yielded without a murmur to his
mistrust. With a woman's tact she made him will to do that which was
right, till he fancied the ideas were his own, and thus enjoyed in his
own person the honors of a superiority that was never his. After due
experience of married life, she came to the resolution of never
leaving Clochegourde; for she saw the hysterical tendencies of the
count's nature, and feared the outbreaks which might be talked of in
that gossipping and jealous neighborhood to the injury of her
children. Thus, thanks to her, no one suspected Monsieur de Mortsauf's
real incapacity, for she wrapped his ruins in a mantle of ivy. The
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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: shoulders into this cave, hunting for thy life, Little Frog--I
told him that the hunter would be the hunted. It is well done."
"Little Brother, it is well done," said a deep voice in the
thicket. "We were lonely in the jungle without thee, and Bagheera
came running to Mowgli's bare feet. They clambered up the Council
Rock together, and Mowgli spread the skin out on the flat stone
where Akela used to sit, and pegged it down with four slivers of
bamboo, and Akela lay down upon it, and called the old call to the
Council, "Look--look well, O Wolves," exactly as he had called
when Mowgli was first brought there.
Ever since Akela had been deposed, the Pack had been without a
The Jungle Book |
