| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: in life. Her husband loved the heels of her feet and the
knuckles of her fingers; he loved her like a glutton and a
brute; his love hung about her like an atmosphere; one that
came by chance into the wine-shop was aware of that passion;
and it might be said that by the strength of it the woman had
been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if she loved or
loathed him; he was always in her eyes like something
monstrous - monstrous in his love, monstrous in his person,
horrific but imposing in his violence; and her sentiment
swung back and forward from desire to sickness. But the
mean, where it dwelt chiefly, was an apathetic fascination,
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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 An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: CHAPTER VI
FINAL DISAPPOINTMENT AND ITS FIRST RESULT
The next day, Mademoiselle Cormon, packed into the old carriole with
Josette, and looking like a pyramid on a vast sea of parcels, drove up
the rue Saint-Blaise on her way to Prebaudet, where she was overtaken
by an event which hurried on her marriage,--an event entirely unlooked
for by either Madame Granson, du Bousquier, Monsieur de Valois, or
Mademoiselle Cormon himself. Chance is the greatest of all artificers.
The day after her arrival at Prebaudet, she was innocently employed,
about eight o'clock in the morning, in listening, as she breakfasted,
to the various reports of her keeper and her gardener, when Jacquelin
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