Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/94

 pre-Babylonian times set down by a woman who had won the whole-hearted approval of his great contemporary, William Gladstone.

Not unlike this majestic opening of "Ardath" are many of the poet's own sublime pen-pictures. A master of verse, standing high above all others of his time as well as above most who had preceded him, the warm encomiums that he deliberately awarded to Marie Corelli should surely silence the snarls of envious Grub Street.

But to our story. Within the Monastery of Lars, "far up among the crags crowning the ravine," are seen a group of monks whose intonations strangely stir a listener,—an Englishman,—Alwyn, whose musings on the reverential exercises of the monks indicate the religious purpose that underlies the story which follows. For Alwyn at the time is not only a poet, but an egoist and an agnostic. What sort of fellows are these monks, he muses,—fools or knaves? They must be one or the other, thinks he, else they would not thus chant praises "to a Deity of whose existence there is, and can be, no proof." He is none the less conscious that the ending of faith and the prevalence of what he regards as Truth, would be a dreary result, destroying the beauty of the Universe. With cold and almost contemptuous feelings he watches the proceedings of