| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: to Rastignac and the Chevalier d'Espard.
She was offended at being cross-examined by this layer when she had
intended to beguile his judgment; but as Popinot still looked stupid
from sheer absence of mind, she ended by attributing his interrogatory
to the Questioning Spirit of Voltaire's bailiff.
"My parents," she went on, "married me at the age of sixteen to M.
d'Espard, whose name, fortune, and mode of life were such as my family
looked for in the man who was to be my husband. M. d'Espard was then
six-and-twenty; he was a gentleman in the English sense of the word;
his manners pleased me, he seemed to have plenty of ambition, and I
like ambitious people," she added, looking at Rastignac. "If M.
|
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 Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: in Budmouth might have completely demeaned her.
The only way to look queenly without realms or hearts
to queen it over is to look as if you had lost them;
and Eustacia did that to a triumph. In the captain's
cottage she could suggest mansions she had never seen.
Perhaps that was because she frequented a vaster mansion
than any of them, the open hills. Like the summer condition
of the place around her, she was an embodiment of the
phrase "a populous solitude"--apparently so listless,
void, and quiet, she was really busy and full.
To be loved to madness--such was her great desire.
Return of the Native |
