| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: of Effie in The Heart of Midlothian."
"Do you wish not to be 'improper' in England?" asked Bixiou,
addressing Finot.
"Well?"
"Go to the Tuileries and look at a figure there, something like a
fireman carved in marble ('Themistocles,' the statuary calls it), try
to walk like the Commandant's statue, and you will never be
'improper.' It was through strict observance of the great law of the
IMproper that Godefroid's happiness became complete. There is the
story:
"Beaudenord had a tiger, not a 'groom,' as they write that know
|
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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: "Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was
burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot by the
blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of water glitter-
ing and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and
lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its sum-
mit the black smoke poured continuously at the sky. She
burned furiously, mournful and imposing like a funeral
pile kindled in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched
over by the stars. A magnificent death had come like a
grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the
end of her laborious days. The surrender of her weary
Youth |
