| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: /Arabian Nights/."
The man was mad, I thought; but in his voice there was a potent
something which I obeyed. I allowed him to lead, and he went in the
direction of the Fosses de la Bastille, as if he could see; walking
till he reached a lonely spot down by the river, just where the bridge
has since been built at the junction of the Canal Saint-Martin and the
Seine. Here he sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him,
saw the old man's hair gleaming like threads of silver in the
moonlight. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the
far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear night air
and everything about us combined to make a strangely unreal scene.
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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 Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: without his knowledge. Tears rolled from his eyes when they rose in
hers. If to her he was Brittany and her happy childhood, to him she
was life itself.
At sixteen years of age Brigaut did not yet know how to draw or to
model a cornice; he was ignorant of much, but he had earned, by piece-
work done in the leisure of his apprenticeship, some four or five
francs a day. On this he could live in Provins and be near Pierrette;
he would choose the best cabinet-maker in the town, and learn the rest
of his trade in working for him, and thus keep watch over his darling.
Brigaut's mind was made up as he sat there thinking. He went back to
Paris and fetched his certificate, tools, and baggage, and three days
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