| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: snows are melted.
Spendius, surrounded by the Greeks, hid himself in one of the gaps; as
he was afraid, he caused a rumour of his death to be spread.
They were now hideously lean; their skin was overlaid with bluish
marblings. On the evening of the ninth day three Iberians died.
Their frightened companions left the spot. They were stripped, and the
white, naked bodies lay in the sunshine on the sand.
Then the Garamantians began to prowl slowly round about them. They
were men accustomed to existence in solitude, and they reverenced no
god. At last the oldest of the band made a sign, and bending over the
corpses they cut strips from them with their knives, then squatted
Salammbo |
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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the hound, but none other. When we overtook her she
feigned anger, and ordered us back to the palace, but for
once we disobeyed her, and when she found that we would
not let her go upon the last long pilgrimage alone, she wept
and embraced us, and together we went out into the night
toward the south.
"The following day we came upon a herd of small thoats,
and thereafter we were mounted and made good time. We
travelled very fast and very far due south until the morning
of the fifth day we sighted a great fleet of battleships sailing
north. They saw us before we could seek shelter, and soon
The Gods of Mars |
