| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: shark-fins, pickings of wrecks, old brass and copper, seals
perhaps, turtle and shell. Between whiles they fish for shrimp,
and I've heard Kitchell tell how they make pearls by dropping
bird-shot into oysters. They are Kai-gingh to a man, and,
according to Kitchell, the wickedest breed of cats that ever cut
teeth."
The junk bore slowly down upon the schooner. In a few moments she
had hove to alongside. But for the enormous red eyes upon her bow
she was innocent of paint. She was grimed and shellacked with
dirt and grease, and smelled abominably. Her crew were Chinamen;
but such Chinamen! The coolies of the "Bertha Millner" were
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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 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: indeed to confess to Madame de Serizy, to whom he owed the patronage
of Monsieur Granville, the Public Prosecutor, and of the Comte Octave
de Bauvan, a Minister of State, and President of one of the Supreme
Courts: "I am dreadfully in debt."
As he entered the courtyard of the mansion where he found an excuse
for all his vanities, he was saying to himself as he reflected on
Trompe-la-Mort's scheming:
"I can hear the ground cracking under my feet!"
He loved Esther, and he wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Grandlieu! A
strange dilemma! One must be sold to buy the other.
Only one person could effect this bargain without damage to Lucien's
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