austerity, but their
summits are elaborately ornamented and crowned with battlements, which
show in profile against the sky a long series of denticulated stonework.
And over this sort of reddish fretwork of the top, which seems as if it
were there as a frame to the deep blue vault above us, we see rising up
distractedly all the minarets of the neighbourhood; and these minarets
are red-coloured too, redder even than the jealous walls, and are
decorated with arabesques, pierced by the daylight and complicated
with aerial galleries. Some of them are a little distance away; others,
startlingly close, seem to scale the zenith; and all are ravishing and
strange, with their shining crescents and outstretched shafts of wood
that call to the great birds of space. Spite of ourselves we raise our
heads, fascinated by all the beauty that is in the air; but there is
only this square of marvellous sky, a sort of limpid sapphire, set
in the battlements of El-Azhar and fringed by those audacious slender
towers. We are in the religious East of olden days and we feel how the
mystery of this magnificent court--whose architectural ornament consists
merely in geometrical designs repeated to infinity, and does not
commence till quite high up on the battlements, where the minarets point
into the eternal blue--must cast its spell upon the imagination of the
young priests who are being trained here.

*****

"He who instructs the ignorant is like a living man amongst the dead."

"If a day passes without my having learnt something which brings me
nearer to God, let not the dawn of that day be blessed."

Verses from the Hadith.

He who has brought me to this place to-day is my friend, Mustapha Kamel
Pacha, the tribune of Egypt, and I owe to his presence the fact that I
am not treated like a casual visitor. Our names are taken at once to
the great master of El-Azhar, a high personage in Islam, whose pupil
Mustapha formerly was, and who no doubt will receive us in person.

It is in a hall very Arab in its character, furnished only with divans,
that the great master welcomes us, with the simplicity of an ascetic and
the elegant manners of a prelate. His look, and indeed his whole face,
tell how onerous is the sacred office which he exercises: to preside,
namely, at the instruction of these thousands of young priests, who
afterwards are to carry faith and peace and immobility to more than
three hundred millions of men.

And in a few moments M