| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: be in it?" thought Cesar, with a flash of commercial prudence. The
suspicion passed like lightning through his mind. He looked again and
saw Madame Roguin, and the presence of du Tillet was no longer
suspicious. "Still, suppose Constance were right?" he said to himself.
"What a fool I am to listen to women's notions! I'll speak of it to my
uncle Pillerault this morning; it is only a step from the Cour Batave,
where Monsieur Molineux lives, to the Rue des Bourdonnais."
A cautious observer, or a merchant who had met with swindlers in his
business career, would have been saved by this sight; but the
antecedents of Birotteau, the incapacity of his mind, which had little
power to follow up the chain of inductions by which a superior man
 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to allow this frail opportunity for life to entirely
elude her without taking or attempting to take some
advantage from it.
She watched the lion narrowly. He could not see her
without turning his head more than halfway around. She
would attempt a ruse. Silently she rolled over in the
direction of the nearest tree, and away from the lion,
until she lay again in the same position in which Numa
had left her, but a few feet farther from him.
Here she lay breathless watching the lion; but the
beast gave no indication that he had heard aught to
 Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar |