Explore "Lud-In-The-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You may, perhaps, have wondered why a man so full of human failings, and set in so unheroic a mould as Master Nathaniel Chanticleer should have been cast for so great a role. Yet the highest spiritual destinies are not always reserved for the strongest men, nor for the most virtuous ones.
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey's deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel as of old -- whimsical, childlike, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one. or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.