| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: over by a feeble being, and Gaudissart had found his tyrant in Jenny.
He was bringing her home at eleven o'clock from the Gymnase, whither
he had taken her, in full dress, to a proscenium box on the first
tier.
"On my return, Jenny, I shall refurnish your room in superior style.
That big Matilda, who pesters you with comparisons and her real India
shawls imported by the suite of the Russian ambassador, and her silver
plate and her Russian prince,--who to my mind is nothing but a humbug,
--won't have a word to say THEN. I consecrate to the adornment of your
room all the 'Children' I shall get in the provinces."
"Well, that's a pretty thing to say!" cried the florist. "Monster of a
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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 Middlemarch by George Eliot: his hand, though he kept it closed.
The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there
was another will and that poor Peter might have thought better of it,
could not quell the rising disgust and indignation. One likes
to be done well by in every tense, past, present, and future.
And here was Peter capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred
apiece to his own brothers and sisters, and only a hundred apiece
to his own nephews and nieces: the Garths were not mentioned,
but Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were each to have a hundred.
Mr. Trumbull was to have the gold-headed cane and fifty pounds;
the other second cousins and the cousins present were each to have
Middlemarch |
