 Chapter 20 The results of his second fall. He is genius. Nondispeto Madolia Dante Oscar Wilde did not stay long in Naples, a few brief months. The forbidden fruit quickly turned to ashes in his mouth. I give the following extracts from a letter he wrote to Robert Ross in December 1897, shortly after leaving Naples, because it describes the second great crisis in his life, and is besides the bitterest thing he ever wrote, and therefore of peculiar value. The facts of Naples are very bold. Bozy, for four months, by endless lies, offered me a home. He offered me love, affection and care, and promised that I should never want for anything. After four months I accepted his offer, but when we met on our way to Naples, I found he had no money, no plans, and had forgotten all his promises. His one idea was that I should raise the money for us both. I did so to the extent of one hundred and twenty pounds. On this Bozy lived quite happy. When it came to his having to pay his own share, he became terribly unkind and peñurious, except where his own pleasures were concerned, and when my allowance ceased he left. With regard to the five hundred pounds which he said was a debt of honour, he has written to me to say that he admits the debt of honour, but as lots of gentlemen don't pay their debts of honour, it is quite a common thing, and no one thinks any the worse of them. I don't know what you said to Constance, but the bold fact is that I accepted the offer of the home, and found that I was expected to provide the money, and when I could no longer do so, I was left to my own devices. It is the most bitter experience of a bitter life. It is a blow quite awful. It had to come, but I know it is better I should never see him again. I don't want to. It fills me with horror. A word of explanation will explain his reference to his wife Constance in this letter. By a deed of separation made at the end of his imprisonment, Mrs. Wilde undertook to allow Oscar one hundred and fifty pounds a year for life, under the condition that the allowance was to be forfeited if Oscar ever lived under the same roof with Lord Alfred Douglas. Having forfeited the allowance, Oscar got Robert Ross to ask his wife to continue it, and in spite of the forfeiture Mrs. Wilde continually sent Oscar money through Robert Ross, merely stipulating that her husband should not be told whence the money came. Ross too, who had also sent him one hundred and fifty pounds a year, resumed his monthly payments as soon as he left Douglas. My friendship with Oscar Wilde, which had been interrupted after he left prison by a silly jibe, directed rather against the go-between he had sent to me than against him, was renewed in Paris, early in 1898. I have never felt anything but the most cordial affection for Oscar, and as soon as I went to Paris and met him, I explained what had seemed to him unkind. When I asked him about his life since his release, he told me simply that he had quarrelled with Rosie Douglas. I did not attribute much importance to this, but I could not help noticing the extraordinary change that had taken place in him since he had been in Naples. His health was almost as good as ever. In fact, the prison discipline with its two years of hard living had done him so much good that his health continued excellent almost to the end. But his whole manner and attitude to life had again changed. He now resembled the successful Oscar of the early nineties. I caught echoes too in his speech of a harder, smaller nature. That talk about reformation, Frank, is all nonsense. No one ever rarely reforms or changes. I am what I always was. He was mistaken. He took up again the old pagan standpoint, but he was not the same. He was reckless now, not thoughtless, and as soon as one probed a little beneath the surface, depressed almost to despairing. He had learnt the meaning of suffering and pity had sent their value. He had turned his back upon them all. It is true. But he could not return to pagan carelessness and the light-hearted enjoyment of pleasure. He did his best and almost succeeded, but the effort was there. His creed now was what it used to be about eighteen ninety-two. Let us get what pleasure we may in the fleeting days, for the night cometh, and the silence that can never be broken. The old doctrine of original sin we now call reversion to type. The most lovely garden rose, if allowed to go without discipline and tendance, will in a few generations become again the common, sentless dog-rows of our hedges. Such a reversion to type had taken place in Oscar Wilde. It must be inferred, perhaps, that the old pagan Greek in him was stronger than the Christian virtues which had been called into being by the discipline and suffering of prison. Little by little, as he began to live his old life again, the lessons learned in prison seemed to drop from him and be forgotten. But in reality the high thoughts he had lived with were not lost. His lips had been touched by the divine fire. His eyes had seen the world-wonder of sympathy, pity, and love, and, strangely enough, this higher vision helped, as we shall soon see, to shake his individuality from its centre, and thus destroyed his power of work, and completed his soul-ruin. Oscar's second fall, this time from a height, was fatal and made writing impossible to him. It is all clear enough now in retrospect, though I did not understand it at the time. When he went to live with Bozy Douglas, he threw off the Christian attitude, but afterwards had to recognise that De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Jail were deeper and better work than any of his earlier writings. He resumed the pagan position, outwardly and for the time being he was the old Oscar again, with his Greek love of beauty and hatred of disease, deformity and ugliness. And whenever he met a kindred spirit, he absolutely reveled in gay paradoxes and brilliant flashes of humour. But he was at war with himself, like Milton Satan, always conscious of his fall, always regretful of his lost estate, and by reason of this division of spirit unable to write. Perhaps because of this he threw himself more than ever into talk. He was beyond all comparison the most interesting companion I have ever known, the most brilliant talker I cannot but think that ever lived. No one surely ever gave himself more entirely in speech. Again and again he declared that he had only put his talent into his books and plays, but his genius into his life. If he had said into his talk it would have been the exact truth. People have differed a great deal about his mental and physical condition after he came out of prison. All who knew him really, Ross, Turner, Moore, Aidy, Lord Alfred Douglas and myself, are agreed that in spite of a slight deafness he was never better in health, never indeed so well. But some French friends were determined to make him out a martyr. In his picture of Wilde's last years, Gide tells us that he had suffered too grievously from his imprisonment, his will had been broken, nothing remained in his shattered life but a mouldy ruin painful to contemplate of his former self. At times he seemed to wish to show that his brain was still active, humor there was, but it was far-fetched, forced and threadbare. These touches may be necessary in order to complete a French picture of the social outcast. They are not only untrue when applied to Oscar Wilde but the reverse of the truth. He never talked so well, was never so charming a companion as in the last years of his life. In the very last year his talk was more genial, more humorous, more vivid than ever, with a wider range of thought and intense or stimulus than before. He was a born improvisatore. At the moment he always dazzled one out of judgment. A phonograph would have discovered the truth. A great part of his charm was physical. Much of his talk, mere topsy-turvy paradox, the very froth of thought, carried off by gleaming dancing eyes, smiling happy lips, and a melodious voice. The entertainment usually started with some humorous play on words. One of the company would say something obvious or trivial, repeat a proverb or commonplace tag such as, genius is born, not made, and Oscar would flash in smiling. Not paid, my dear fellow, not paid. An interesting comment would follow on some doing of the day, a skit on some accepted belief or a parody of some pretentious solemnity, a winged word on a new book or a new author, and when everyone was smiling with amused enjoyment, the fine eyes would become introspective. The beautiful voice would take on a grave music, and Oscar would begin a story, a story with symbolic second meaning or a glimpse of new thought, and when all were listening enthralled, of a sudden the eyes would dance. The smile break forth again like sunshine, and some sparkling witticism would set everyone laughing. The spell was broken, but only for a moment, a new clue would soon be given, and at once Oscar was off again with renewed brio to finer effects. The talking itself warmed and quickened him extraordinarily. He loved to show off and astonish his audience, and usually talked better after an hour or two than at the beginning. His verb was inexhaustible. But always a great part of the fascination lay in the quick changes from grave to gay, from pathos to mockery, from philosophy to fun. There was but little of the actor in him. When telling a story, he never mimicked his personages. His drama seldom lay in clash of character, but in thought. It was the sheer beauty of the words, the melody of the cadenced voice, the glowing eyes which fascinated you, and always and above all, the scintillating, humor that lifted his monologues into works of art. Curiously enough, he seldom talked of himself, or of the incidents of his past life. After the prison, he always regarded himself as a sort of Prometheus, and his life as symbolic. But his earlier experiences never suggested themselves to him as specially significant. The happenings of his life after his fall seemed predestined and fateful to him. Yet of those he spoke but seldom. Even when carried away by his own eloquence, he kept the tone of good society. When you came afterwards to think over one of those wonderful evenings when he had talked for hours almost without interruption, you hardly found more than an epic diagram, a fugitive flash of critical insight, an apologue or a pretty story charmingly told. Overall this he had cast the glittering, sparkling robe of his Celtic gaiety, verbal humor and sensual enjoyment of living. It was all like champagne, meant to be drunk quickly. If you let it stand, you soon realised that some still wines had rarer virtues, but there was always about him the magic of a rich and peasant personality. Like some great actor, he could take a poor part and fill it with the passion and vivacity of his own nature till it became a living and memorable creation. He gave the impression of wide intellectual range, yet in reality he was not broad. Life was not his study nor the world drama his field. His talk was all of literature and art and the vanities. The light drawing-room comedy on the edge of farce was his kingdom. There he ruled as a sovereign. One who has read Oscar Wilde's plays at all carefully, especially the importance of being earnest, must, I think, see that in kindly happy humour he is without a peer in literature. You can never forget the scene between the town and country girl in that delightful farce comedy. As soon as the London girl realises that the country girl has hardly any opportunity of making new friends or meeting new men, she exclaims, ah, now I know what they mean when they talk of agricultural depression. This sunny humour is Wilde's special contribution to literature. He calls forth a smile, whereas others try to provoke laughter. Yet he was as witty as any one of whom we have record, and some of the best epigrams in English are his. The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing is better than the best of La Rochefoucault, as good as the best of Wauvernarc or Joubert. He was as wittily urbane as congrieve. Yet all the witty things that one man can say may be numbered on one's fingers. It was through his humour that Wilde reigned supreme. It was his humour that lent his talk its singular attraction. He was the only man I have ever met or heard of who could keep one smiling with amusement hour after hour. True much of the humour was merely verbal, but it was always gay and genial. Some a lightning humour, I used to call it, unexpected, dazzling, full of colour, yet harmless. Let me try and catch here some of the fleeting iridescence of that radiant spirit. Some years before I had been introduced to Mademoiselle Marie-Anne de Beauvais by Sir Charles Dilck. Mademoiselle de Beauvais was a writer of talent, and knew English uncommonly well. But in spite of masses of fair hair and vivacious eyes, she was certainly very plain. As soon as she heard I was in Paris, she asked me to present Oscar Wilde to her. She had no objection, and so I made a meeting between them. When he caught sight of her, he stopped short. Seeing his astonishment, she cried to him in her quick, abrupt way. N'est-ce pas, Monsieur Wilde, que je suis la famille la plus lente de France? Come confess, Mr Wilde, that I am the ugliest woman in France. Being low, Oscar replied with smiling courtesy. Du monde, madame, du monde. In the world, madame, in the world. No one could help laughing the retort was irresistible. He should have said au monde, madame, au monde, but the meaning was clear. As this thought-quickness and happy dexterity had to be used in self-defense, Jean Lorin was the wittiest talker I have ever heard in France, and a most brilliant journalist. His life was as abandoned as it could well be. In fact, he made a parade of strange vices. In the days of Oscar's supremacy, he always pretended to be a friend and admirer. About this time Oscar wanted me to know Stéphane Malarmé. He took me to his rooms one afternoon when there was a reception. There were a great many people present. Malarmé was standing at the other end of the room, leaning against the chimney-piece. Near the door was Lorin, and we both went towards him, Oscar without stretched hands, delighted to see you, Jean. For some reason or other, most probably out of tawdry vanity, Lorin folded his arms theatrically and replied, I regret I cannot say as much. I can no longer be one of your friends, Monsieur Wilde." The insult was stupid, brutal, yet everyone was on tiptoe to see how Oscar would answer it. How true that is, he said quietly, as quickly as if he had expected the traitor thrust. How true and how sad! At a certain time in life all of us who have done anything like you and me, Lorin, just realised that we no longer have any friends in this world, but only lovers. Plus d'amis seulement des amants. A smile of approval lighted up every face. Well said, well said, was the general exclamation. His humour was almost invariably generous, kind. One day in a Paris studio the conversation turned on the character of Marat. One Frenchman would have it that he was a fiend. Another saw in him the incarnation of the revolution. A third insisted that he was merely the gaman of the Paris streets grown up. Suddenly one turned to Oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his opinion. He took the ball at once gravely. Ce valheureux! Il n'avait pas de veine pour une fois qu'il a prit un vin. Poor devil he was unlucky to come to such grief for once taking a bath. For a little while Oscar was interested in the Dreyfus case, and especially in the commandant Esther Hazy, who played such a prominent part in it with the infamous Bordeaux, which brought about the conviction of Dreyfus. Most Frenchmen now know that the Bordeaux was a forgery, and without any real value. I was curious to see Esther Hazy, and Oscar brought him to lunch one day at Durand's. He was a little below middle height, extremely thin, and as dark as any Italian, with an enormous hook nose and heavy jaw. He looked to me like some foul bird of prey, greed and cunning in the restless brown eyes set close together, quick resolution in the outthrust bony jaws and hard chin. But manifestly he had no capacity, no mind. He was meager in all ways. For a long time he bored us by insisting that Dreyfus was a traitor, a Jew and a German, to him a trinity of faults, whereas he, Esther Hazy, was perfectly innocent and had been very badly treated. At length Oscar lent across the table and said to him in French, with, strange to say, a slight Irish accent, not noticeable when he spoke English. The innocent, he said, always suffer, Monsieur le Commandant. It is their mid-year. Besides, we are all innocent till we are found out. It is a poor, common part to play, and within the compass of the meanest. The interesting thing surely is to be guilty and so wear as a halo the seduction of sin. Esther Hazy appeared put out for a moment, and then he caught the genial gaiety of the reproof and the hint contained in it. His vanity would not allow him to remain long in a secondary role, and so to our amazement he suddenly broke out. Why should I not make my confession to you? I will. It is I, Esther Hazy, who alone am guilty. I wrote the borderault, a put Dreyfus in prison, and all France cannot liberate him. I am the maker of the plot, and the chief part in it is mine. To his surprise we both roared with laughter. The influence of the larger nature on the smaller to such an extraordinary issue was irresistibly comic. At the time no one even suspected Esther Hazy in connection with the borderault. For example, this time of Oscar's wit may find a place here. Sir Louis Morris was a voluminous poetaster with a common mind. He once bored Oscar by complaining that his books were boycotted by the press. After giving several instances of unfair treatment he burst out. There's a conspiracy against me, a conspiracy of silence. But what can one do? What should I do? Join it! replied Oscar, smiling. Oscar's humour was for the most part intellectual, and something like it can be found in others. Though the happy fecundity and lightsome gaiety of it belonged to the individual temperament and perished with him. I remember once trying to give an idea of the different sides of his humour, just to see how far it could be imitated. I made believe to have met him at Paddington after his release from Reading, though he was brought to Pentonville in private clothes by a warder on May 18th, and was released early the next morning, two years to the hour from the commencement of the sessions at which he was convicted on May 25th. The act says that you must be released from the prison in which you are first confined. I pretended, however, that I had met him. The train, I said, ran into Paddington station early in the morning. I went across to him as he got out of the carriage. Ray Dawn filled the vast echoing space. A few porters could be seen scattered about. It was all chill and depressing. Welcome, welcome, Oscar, I cried holding out my hands. I am sorry I am alone. You ought to have been met by troops of boys and girls, flower-crowned, but alas you will have to content yourself with one middle-aged admirer. Yes, it's really terrible, Frank," he replied gravely. If England persists in treating her criminals like this, she does not deserve to have any. Ah! said an old lady to him one day at lunch. I know you people who pretend to be a great deal worse than you are. I know you. I shouldn't be afraid of you." Naturally we pretend to be bad, dear lady," he replied. It is the only way to make ourselves interesting to you. Everyone believes a man who pretends to be good, he is such a bore. But no one believes a man who says he is evil. That makes him interesting. Oh! you are too clever for me," replied the old lady, nodding her head. You see, in my day none of us went to Gerton and Newnam. There were no schools then for the higher education of women. How absurd such schools are! Are they not? cried Oscar. Where I a despot I should immediately establish schools for the lower education of women. That's what they need. It usually takes ten years living with a man to complete a woman's education. Then what would you do? asked someone about the lower education of man. That's already provided for, my dear fellow, amply provided for. We have our public schools and universities to see to that. What we want are schools for the higher education of men, and schools for the lower education of women. Genial persiflage of this sort was his particular forte, whether my imitation of it is good or bad. His kindliness was ingrained. I never heard him say a gross or even a vulgar word, hardly even a sharp or unkind thing. Whether in company or with one person, his mind was all dedicated to genial, kindly, flattering thoughts. He hated rudeness or discussion or insistence, as he hated ugliness or deformity. One evening of this summer a trivial incident showed me that he was sinking deeper into the mud-honey of life. A new play was about to be given at the Français, and because he expressed a wish to see it, I bought a couple of tickets. We went in, and he made me change places with him in order to be able to talk to me. He was growing nearly deaf in the bad ear. After the first act we went outside to smoke a cigarette. It's stupid, Oscar began, fancy us too, going in there to listen to what that foolish Frenchman says about love. He knows nothing about it. Either of us could write much better on the theme. Let's walk up and down here under the columns and talk. The people began to go into the theatre again, and as they were disappearing I said, it seems rather a pity to waste our tickets, so many wish to see the play. We shall find someone to give them to," he said indifferently, stopping by one of the pillars. At that very moment, as if under his hand, appeared a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, one of the gutter snipe of Paris. To my amazement, he said, Bonsoir, Monsieur Wilde. Oscar turned to him, smiling, «Vous êtes jus-le, n'est-ce pas? You are jus-le, aren't you?» he questioned. «Oui, Monsieur Wilde. Here is the very boy you want!» Oscar cried. «Let's give him the tickets, and he'll sell them and make something out of them.» But Oscar turned and began to explain to the boy how I had given two hundred francs for the tickets, and how even now they should be worth a Louis or two. «Déjeuner! Yellow boys!» cried the youth, his sharp face lighting up, and in a flash he had vanished with the tickets. «You see, he knows me, Frank!» said Oscar, with the childish pleasure of gratified vanity. «Yes!» I replied, dryly, «not an acquaintance to be proud of, I should think. I don't agree with you, Frank!» he said, resenting my tone. «Did you notice his eyes? He is one of the most beautiful boys I have ever seen, an exact replica of Émilienne de l'Enceinte. I call him Jules de l'Enceinte, and I tell her he must be her brother. I had them both dining with me once, and the boy is finer than the girl, his skin far more beautiful. «By the way, he went on, as we were walking up the Avenue de l'Opéra, why should we not see Émilienne? Why should she not sup with us, and you could compare them? She is playing at Olympia, near the Grand Hotel. Let's go and compare Aspasia and Agathon, and for once I shall be Alcibiades, and you the moralist Socrates! I would rather talk to you, I replied. We can talk afterwards, Frank, when all the stars come out to listen. Now is the time to live and enjoy! As you will, I said, and we went to the music hall and got a box, and he wrote a little note to Émilienne de l'Enceinte, and she came afterwards to supper with us. Though her face was pretty, she was preeminently dull and uninteresting, without two ideas in her bird's head. She was all greed and vanity, and could talk of nothing but the hope of getting an engagement in London. Could he help her, or would Monsieur, referring to me, as a journalist, get her some good puffs in advance? Oscar promised everything gravely. While we were supping inside, Oscar caught sight of the boy passing along the boulevard. At once he tapped on the window, loud enough to attract his attention. Being loath, the boy came in, and the four of us had supper together, a strange quartet. Now, Frank, said Oscar, compare the two faces, and you will see the likeness. And indeed there was in both the same Greek beauty, the same regularity of feature, the same low brow and large eyes, the same perfect oval. I am telling my friend, said Oscar to Emilienne in French, how alike you are, true brother and sister in beauty, and in the finest of arts, the art of living, and they both laughed. The boy is better looking, he went on to me in English. Her mouth is coarse and hard, her hands common, while the boy is quite perfect. The dirty, don't you think, I could not help remarking. Dirty, of course, but that's nothing. Nothing is so immaterial as colouring. Form is everything. And his form is perfect, as exquisite as the David of Donatello. That's what he's like, Frank, the David of Donatello. And he pulled his jowl, delighted to have found the painting word. As soon as Emilienne saw that we were talking of the boy, her interest in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite. She had to go, she said suddenly. She was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of affected politeness. Au revoir, n'est-ce pas, à Charin-Crosse, n'est-ce pas, monsieur, vous ne moublierz pas. As we turned to walk along the boulevard, I noticed that the boy, too, had disappeared. The moonlight was playing with the leaves and boughs of the plain trees, and throwing them in Japanese shadow pictures on the pavement. I was given over to sort. Evidently Oscar imagined I was offended, for he launched out into a panageric on Paris. The most wonderful city in the world, the only civilised capital, the only place on earth where you find absolute toleration for all human frailties, with passion and admiration for all human virtues and capacities. Do you remember Verlaine, Frank? His life was nameless and terrible. He did everything to excess, was drunken, dirty and debauched. And yet there he would sit in a café on the boule-miche, and everybody who came in would bow to him, and call him Maitre, and be proud of any sign of recognition from him because he was a great poet. In England they would have murdered Verlaine, and men who call themselves gentlemen would have gone out of their way to insult him in public. England is still only half civilised. Englishmen touch life at one or two points, without suspecting its complexity. They are rude and harsh. All the while I could not help thinking of Dante, and his condemnation of Florence, and its hard malignant people, the people who still had something in them of the mountain and rock of their birthplace. Etienne encore del monte, del macinio. You are not offended, Frank, are you, with me, for making you meet two cariattides of the Parisian temple of pleasure? No, no, I cried, I was thinking how Dante condemned Florence and its people, its ungrateful malignant people, and how when his teacher, Brunetto Latini, and his companions came to him in the underworld, he felt as if he too must throw himself into the pit with them. Everything prevented him from carrying out his good intention, buona voglia, except the fear of being himself burned and baked as they were. Non dispetto, madolia, la vostra condizione dentro, mefisse. Not contempt, but sorrow. Oh, Frank, said Oscar, what a beautiful incident, I remember it all. I read it this last winter in Naples. Of course Dante was full of pity, as are all great poets, for they know the weakness of human nature. But even the sorrow of which Dante spoke seemed to carry with it some hint of condemnation, for after a pause he went on. You must not judge me, Frank, you don't know what I have suffered. No wonder I snatch now at enjoyment with both hands. They did terrible things to me. Did you know that when I was arrested the police let the reporters come to the cell and stare at me? Think of it, the degradation and the shame, as if I had been a monster on show. Oh, you knew! Then you know too how I was really condemned before I was tried, and what a farce my trial was, that terrible judge with his insults to those he was sorry he could not send to the scaffold. I never told you the worst thing that befell me. When they took me from onceworth to Reading we had to stop at Clubham Junction. We were nearly an hour waiting for the train. There we sat on the platform. I was in the hideous prison clothes, handcuffed between two warders. You know how the trains come in every minute. Almost at once I was recognised, and there passed before me a continual stream of men and boys, and one after the other offered some foul sneer or jibe or scoff. They stood before me, Frank, calling me names and spitting on the ground, an eternity of torture. My heart bled for him. I wonder if any punishment will teach humanity to such people, or understanding of their own baseness. After walking a few paces he turned to me. Don't reproach me, Frank, even in thought. You have no right to. You don't know me yet. Someday you will know more, and then you will be sorry. So sorry that there will be no room for any reproach of me. If I could tell you what I suffered this winter. This winter I cried in Naples—yes, in gay, happy Naples. It was last autumn that I rarely fell to ruin. I had come out of prison filled with good intentions, with all good resolutions. My wife had promised to come back to me. I hoped she would come very soon. If she had come at once, if she only had, it might all have been different, but she did not come. I have no doubt she was right from her point of view. She has always been right. But I was alone there in Bernival, and Bozir kept on calling me, calling, and as you know I went to him. At first it was all wonderful. The bruised leaves began to unfold in the light and warmth of affection. The sore feeling began to die out of me. But at once my allowance from my wife was stopped. Yes, Frank, he said, with a touch of the old humour. They took it away when they should have doubled it. I did not care. When I had money I gave it to him without counting. So when I could not pay, I thought Bozir would pay, and I was content. But at once I discovered that he expected me to find the money. I did what I could, but when my means were exhausted the evil days began. He expected me to write plays and get money for us both, as in the past. But I couldn't. I simply could not. When we were done, his temper went to pieces. He has never known what it is to want, really. You have no conception of the wretchedness of it all. He has a terrible, imperious, irritable temper. He's the son of his father, I interjected. Yes, said Oscar, I'm afraid that's the truth, Frank. He is the son of his father, violent and irritable, with a tongue like a lash. As soon as the means of life were straightened, he became sullen and began reproaching me. Why didn't I write? Why didn't I earn money? What was the good of me? As if I could write under such conditions. No man, Frank, has ever suffered worse shame and humiliation. At last there was a washing-bill to be paid. Posey was done for it, and when I came in he raged and whipped me with his tongue. It was appalling. I had done everything for him, given him everything, lost everything, and now I could only stand and see love turned to hate, the strength of love's wine making the bitter more venomous. Then he left me, Frank, and now there is no hope for me. I am lost, finished, a derelict floating at the mercy of the stream without plan or purpose. And the worst of it is, I know if men have treated me badly. I have treated myself worse. It is our sins against ourselves we can never forgive. Do you wonder that I snatch at any pleasure? He turned and looked at me, all shaken. I saw the tears pouring down his cheeks. I cannot talk any more, Frank. He said in a broken voice, I must go. I called a cab. My heart was so heavy within me, so sore, that I said nothing to stop him. He lifted his hand to me and sign of farewell, and I turned again to walk home alone, understanding for the first time in my life the full significance of the marvellous line in which Shakespeare summed up his impeachment of the world, and his own justification, the only justification of any of us mortals, a man more sinned against than sinning. CHAPTER XXI His sense of rivalry, his love of life and laziness. The more I considered the matter, the more clearly I saw or thought I saw that the only chance of salvation for Oscar was to get him to work, to give him some purpose in life. And the reader should remember here that at this time I had not read de profundis, and did not know that Oscar, in prison, had himself recognised this necessity. After all, I said to myself, nothing is lost if he will only begin to write. A man should be able to whistle happiness and hope down the wind, and take despair to his bed and heart, and win courage from his harsh companion. Happiness is not essential to the artist. Happiness never creates anything but memories. If Oscar would work, and not brood over the past, and study himself like an Indian fakir, he might yet come to soul health and achievement. He could win back everything, his own respect, and the respect of his fellows, if indeed that were worth winning. An artist I knew must have at least the self-abnegation of the hero, and heroic resolution to strive and strive, or he will never bring it far even in his art. If I could only get Oscar to work, it seemed to me everything might yet come right. I spent a week with him, lunching and dining, and putting all this before him in every way. I noticed that he enjoyed the good-eating and the good-drinking as intensely as ever. He was even drinking too much, I thought, was beginning to get stout and flabby again. But the good-living was a necessity to him, and it certainly did not prevent him from talking charmingly. But as soon as I pressed him to write, he would shake his head. Oh, Frank, I cannot! You know my rooms! How could I write there? A horrid bedroom like a closet, and a little sitting-room without any outlook. Books everywhere, and no place to write. To tell you the truth, I cannot even read in it. I can do nothing in such miserable poverty. Again and again he came back to this. He harped upon his destitution, so that I could not but see purpose in it. He was already cunning in the art of getting money without asking for it. My heart ached for him. One goes downhill with such fatal speed and ease. The mire at the bottom is so loathsome. I hastened to say, I can let you have a little money, but you ought to work, Oscar. After all, why should anyone help you if you will not help yourself? If I cannot aid you to save yourself, I am only doing you harm. Abase sophism, Frank. Mire sophistry, as you know. A good lunch is better than a bad one for any living man. I smiled. Don't do yourself injustice. You could easily gain thousands and live like a prince again. Why not make the effort? If I had pleasant, sunny rooms, I'd try. It's harder than you think. Nonsense, it's easy for you. Your punishment has made your name known in every country in the world. A book of yours would sell like wildfire. A play of yours would draw in any capital. You might live here like a prince. Shakespeare lost love and friendship, hope and health to boot everything, and yet he forced himself to write the Tempest. Why can't you? I'll try, Frank, I'll try. I may just mention here that any praise of another man, even of Shakespeare, was sure to move Oscar to emulation. He acknowledged no superior. In some articles in the Saturday review I had said that no one had ever given complete a record of himself than Shakespeare. We know him better than we know any of our contemporaries, I went on, and he is better worth knowing. At once Oscar wrote to me, objecting to this phrase, Surely, Frank, you have forgotten me. Surely I am better worth knowing than Shakespeare. The question astonished me, so that I could not make up my mind at once, but when he pressed me later I had to tell him that Shakespeare had reached higher heights of thought and feeling than any modem, though I was probably wrong in saying that I knew him better than I knew a living man. I had to go back to England, and some little time elapsed before I could return to Paris, but I crossed again early in the summer, and found he had written nothing. I often talked with him about it, but now he changed his ground a little. I can't write, Frank. When I take up my pen all the past comes back. I cannot bear the thoughts, regret and remorse, like twin dogs wait to seize me at any idle moment. I must go out and watch life amuse interest myself, or I should go mad. You don't know how sore it is about my heart, as soon as I am alone. I am face to face with my own soul, the Oscar of four years ago, with his beautiful, secure life, and his glorious, easy triumphs comes up before me, and I cannot stand the contrast. My eye is burned with tears. If you care for me, Frank, you will not ask me to write. You promised to try, I said somewhat harshly, and I want you to try. You haven't suffered more than Dante suffered in exile and poverty, yet you know if he had suffered ten times as much he would have written it all down. Tears indeed, the fire in his eyes would have dried the tears. Too enough, Frank, but Dante was all of one piece, whereas I am drawn in two different directions. I was born to sing the joy and pride of life, the pleasure of living, the delight in everything beautiful in this most beautiful world, and they took me and tortured me till I learned pity and sorrow. Now I cannot sing the joy heartily, because I know the suffering, and I was never made to sing of suffering. I hate it, and I want to sing the love songs of joy and pleasure. It is joy alone which appeals to my soul, the joy of life and beauty and love. I could sing the song of Apollo, the sun-guard, and they try to force me to sing the song of tortured Marcias. This to me was his true and final confession. His second fall after leaving prison had put him at war with himself. This is, I think, the very heart of truth about his soul. The song of sorrow, of pity and renunciation, was not his song, and the experience of suffering prevented him from singing the delight of life and the joy he took in beauty. It never seemed to occur to him that he could reach a faith which should include both self-indulgence and renunciation in a larger acceptance of life. In spite of his sunny nature he had a certain amount of jealousy and envy in him which was always brought to light by the popular success of those whom he had known and measured. I remember his telling me once that he wrote his first play because he was annoyed at the way Pinheiro was being praised. Pinheiro, who can't write at all, he is a stage carpenter and nothing else. His characters are made of dough and never was there such a worthless style or rather such a complete absence of style. He writes like a grosser's assistant. I noticed now that this tray of jealousy was stronger in him than ever. One day I showed him an English illustrated paper which I had bought on my way to lunch. It contained a picture of George Kersen. I beg his pardon, Lord Kersen, as viceroy of India. He was photographed in a carriage with his wife by his side. The gorgeous state carriage, drawn by four horses with outriders and escorted by cavalry and cheering crowds, all the paraphernalia and pomp of imperial power. You see that!" cried Oscar angrily. "'Pancy George Kersen being treated like that. I know him well. A more perfect example of plodding mediocrity was never seen in the world. He had never a thought or phrase above the common." "'I know him pretty well, too,' I replied. His incurable commonness is the secret of his success. He voices, as he would say himself, the opinion of the average man on every subject. He might be a leader-writer on the mail or times. What do you know of the average man or of his opinions? But the man in the street, as he is called today, can only learn from the man who is just one step above himself, and so the George Kersen's come to success in life. That, too, is the secret of the popularity of this or that writer. Hall Cain is an even larger George Kersen, a better endowed mediocrity. But why should he have fame and state and power?' Oscar cried indignantly. "'State and power? Because he is George Kersen. But fame he never will have, and I suspect, if the truth were known, in the moments when he, too, comes face to face with his own soul, as you say, he would give a good deal of his state and power for a very little of your fame.' "'That is probably true, Frank,' cried Oscar. "'That is almost certainly the crumpled rose-leave of his couch. But how grossly he is overestimated and over-rewarded! Do you know Wilfred Blunt?' "'I have met him,' I replied, but don't know him. He met once, and he bragged preposterously about his Arab ponies. I was at that time editor of the Evening News, and Mr. Blunt tried hard to talk down to my level. He is by way of being a poet, and he has a very real love of literature. I know, I said, I really know his work, and a good deal about him, and have nothing but praise for the way he championed the Egyptians, and for his poetry, when he has anything to say. Well, Frank, he had a sort of club at Crabbit Park, a club for poets, to which only poets were invited, and he was a most admirable and perfect host. Lady Blunt could never make out what he was up to. He used to get us all down to Crabbit, and the poet who was received last had to make a speech about the new poet, a speech in which he was supposed to tell the truth about the newcomer. Blunt took the idea, no doubt, from the custom of the French Academy. Well, he asked me down to Crabbit Park, and George Curzon, if you please, was the poet picked to make the speech about me? Good God! I cried, Curzon, a poet! It's like Kitchener being taken for a great captain, or Salisbury for a statesman. He writes verses, Frank, but of course there is not a line of poetry in him. His verses are good enough, though, well-turned, I mean, and sharp, if not witty. Well, Curzon had to make this speech about me after dinner. We had a delightful dinner, quite perfect, and then Curzon got up. He had evidently prepared his speech carefully. It was bristling with innuendos, snaring side-hits at strange sins. Curzon looked at his fellow and thought the speech the height of bad taste. Mediocrity always detests ability, and loaths genius. Curzon wanted to prove to himself that at any rate in the moralities he was my superior. When he sat down I had to answer him, that was the programme. Of course I had not prepared a speech, had not thought about Curzon or what he might say, but I got up, Frank, and told the kindliest truth about him, and everyone took it for the bitterest sarcasm, and cheered and cheered me, though what I said was merely the truth. I told how difficult it was for Curzon to work and study at Oxford. Curzon wanted to know him because of his position, because he was going into Parliament, and certain to make a great figure there. And everyone tried to make up to him, but he knew that he must not yield to such seduction, so he sat in his room with a wet towel about his head, and worked and worked without ceasing. In the earlier examinations, which demand only memory, he won first honours. But even success could not induce him to relax his efforts. He lived laborious days, and took every college examination seriously. He made out dates in red ink, and hung them on his wall, and learnt pages of uninteresting events, and put them in blue ink in his memory, and at last came out of the final schools with second honours. And now I concluded this model youth is going into life, and he is certain to treat it seriously, certain to win at any rate second honours in it, and have a great and praiseworthy career. Prank they roared with laughter, and to do curse and justice, at the end he came up to me and apologised, and was charming. Indeed they all made much of me, and we had a great night. I remember we talked the whole night through, or rather I talked and everyone else listened, for the great principle of the division of labour is beginning to be understood in English society. The host gives excellent food, excellent wine, excellent cigarettes, and super excellent coffee, that's his part, and all the men listen, that's theirs, while I talk, and the stars twinkle their delight. Wyndham was there too, you know George Wyndham, with his beautiful face and fine figure. He is infinitely cleverer than Curson, but he has not Curson's push and force, or perhaps as you say he is not in such close touch with the average man as Curson. He was charming to me. In the morning we all trooped out to see the dawn, and some of the young ones, wild with youth and high spirits, Curson of course among the number, stripped off their clothes, and rushed down to the lake, and began swimming and diving about like a lot of schoolboys. There is a great deal of the schoolboy in all Englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable. When they came out they ran over the grass to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future rulers of England. I shall never forget the scene. Wilfred Blunt had gone up to his wife's apartments, and had changed into some fantastic pyjamas. Suddenly he opened an upper window, and came out and perched himself cross-legged on the balcony, looking down at the mad game of lawn tennis, for all the world like a sort of pink and green Buddha. While I strolled about with someone, and ordered fresh coffee, and talked till the dawn came with silent silver feet lighting up the beautiful greenery of the park. Now George Curson plays king in India. Wyndham is on the way to power, and I'm hiding in shame and poverty here in Paris, an exile and outcast. Do you wonder that I cannot write, Frank? The awful injustice of life maddens me. After all, what have they done in comparison with what I have done? Close the eyes of all of us now, and fifty years hence, or a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curson, or Wyndham, or Blunt. Whether they lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone. But my comedies, and my stories, and the ballad of Reading Jail will be known and read by millions. And even my unhappy fate will call forth worldwide sympathy. It was all true enough, and good to keep in mind. But even when Oscar spoke of greater men than himself, he took the same attitude. His self-esteem was extraordinary. He did not compare his work with that of others, was not anxious to find his true place, as even Shakespeare was. From the beginning, from youth on, he was convinced that he was a great man, and going to do great things. Many of us have the same belief, and are just as persuaded, but the belief is not ever present with us, as it was with Oscar, moulding all his actions. For instance, I remarked once that his handwriting was unforgettable and characteristic. I worked at it, he said, as a boy. I wanted a distinctive handwriting. It had to be clear and beautiful, and peculiar to me. At length I got it, but it took time and patience. I always wanted everything about me to be distinctive," he added, smiling. He was proud of his physical appearance, inordinately pleased with his great height, vein of it even. Height gives distinction, he declared, and once even went so far as to say, one can't picture Napoleon as small. Napoleon thinks only of his magnificent head, and forgets the little podgy figure. It must have been a great nuisance to him. Small men have no dignity. All this utterly unconscious of the fact that most tall men have no ever-present sense of their height as an advantage. But on the whole one agrees with Montaigne that height is the chief beauty of a man. It gives presence. Oscar never learned anything from criticism. He had a good deal of personal dignity in spite of his amiability, and when one found fault with his work he would smile vaguely, or change the subject as if it didn't interest him. Again and again I played on his self-esteem to get him to write, but always met the same answer. Oh, Frank, it's impossible—impossible for me to work under these disgraceful conditions. But you can have better conditions now, and lots of money if you'll begin to work. He shook his head despairingly. Again and again I tried, but failed to move him, even when I dangled money before him. I didn't then know that he was receiving regularly more than three hundred pounds a year. I thought he was completely destitute, dependent on such casual help as friends could give him. I have a letter from him about this time, asking me for even five pounds, as if he were in extremest need. On one of my visits to Paris, after discussing his position, I could not help saying to him, the only thing that will make you right, Oscar, is absolute blank poverty. That's the sharpest spur, after all, necessity. You don't know me, you replied sharply, I would kill myself. I can endure to the end, but to be absolutely destitute would show me suicide as the open door. Suddenly his depressed manner changed, and his whole face lighted up. Isn't it comic, Frank, the way the English talk of the open door, while their doors are always locked and barred and bolted, even their church doors? Yet it is not hypocrisy in them. They simply cannot see themselves as they are. They have no imagination. A long pause, and he went on gravely. I said, Frank, is always the temptation of the unfortunate, a great temptation. Suicide is the natural end of the world weary, I replied, but you enjoy life intensely. For you to talk of suicide is ridiculous. Do you know that my wife is dead, Frank? I had heard it. I said, my way back to hope and a new life ends in her grave, he went on. Everything I do, Frank, is irrevocable. He spoke with a certain grave sincerity. The great tragedies of the world are all final and complete. Socrates would not escape death, though Crito opened the prison door for him. I could not avoid prison, though you showed me the way to safety. We are fated to suffer, don't you think, as an example to humanity? An echo and a light unto eternity. I think it would be finer, instead of taking the punishment lying down, to trample it under your feet and make it a rung of the ladder. Oh, Frank, you would turn all the tragedies into triumphs. You are a fighter. My life is done. You love life, I cried, as much as ever you did, more than any one I have ever seen. It is true, he cried, his face lighting up quickly, more than any one, Frank. Life delights me. The people passing on the boulevards, the play of the sunshine in the trees, the noise, the quick movement of the cabs, the costumes of the cochets and searchants de villes. Workers and beggars, pimps and prostitutes, all please me to the soul, charm me. And if you had only let me talk, instead of bothering me to write, I should be quite happy. Why should I write any more? I have done enough for fame. I will tell you a story, Frank. He broke off, and he told me a slight thing about Judas. The little tale was told delightfully, with eloquent inflections of voice, and still more eloquent pauses. The end of all this is, I said, before going back to London, that she will not write. No, no, Frank, he said, that I cannot write under these conditions. If I had money enough, if I could shake off Paris and forget those awful rums of mine, and get to the Riviera for the winter, and live in some seaside village of the Latins, with the blue sea at my feet, and the blue sky above, and God's sunlight about me, and no care for money, then I would write as naturally as a bird sings, because I should be happy and could not help it. You write stories taken from the fight of life. You are careless of surroundings. I am a poet, and can only sing in the sunshine when I am happy. All right, I said, snatching at the half-promise. It is just possible that I may get hold of some money during the next few months, and if I do, you shall go and winter in the south, and live as you please without care of money. If you can only sing when the cage is beautiful and sunlight floods it, I know the very place for you. With this sort of vague understanding we parted for some months. CHAPTER XXII. A Great Romantic Passion. There is no more difficult problem for the writer, no harder task than to decide how far he should allow himself to go in picturing human weakness. We have all come from the animal, and can all, without any assistance from books, imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained self-indulgence. Yet it is instructive and pregnant with warning to remark that as soon as the sheet anchor of high resolve is gone, the frailties of man tend to become master vices. All our civilisation is artificially built up by effort. All high humanity is the reward of constant striving against natural desires. In the fall of this year, 1898, I sold the Saturday review to Lord Hardwick and his friends, and as soon as the purchase was completed, I think in November, I wired to Oscar that I should be in Paris in a short time, and ready to take him to the south for his holiday. I sent him some money to pave the way. A few days later I crossed and wired to him from Calais to dine with me at Durand's, and to begin dinner if I happen to be late. While waiting for dinner, I said, I want to stay two or three days in Paris to see some pictures. Would you be ready to start south on Thursday next? It was then Monday, I think. On Thursday, he repeated, yes, Frank, I think so. There is some money for anything you may want to buy, I said, and handed him a check I had made payable to self and signed, for he knew where he could cash it. How good of you, Frank! I cannot thank you enough. You start on Thursday, he added, as if considering it. If you would rather wait a little, I said, say so, I'm quite willing. No, Frank, I think Thursday will do. We are rarely going to the south for the whole winter. How wonderful! How gorgeous it will be! We had a great dinner, and talked and talked. He spoke of some of the new Frenchmen, and at great length of Pierre-Louis, whom he described as a disciple. It was I, Frank, who induced him to write his Aphrodite in prose. He spoke, too, of the Grand Guignol Theatre. Le Grand Guignol is the first theatre in Paris. It looks like a non-conformist chapel, a barn of a room with a gallery at the back, and a little wooden stage. There you see the primitive tragedies of real life. They are as ugly and as fascinating as life itself. You must see it, and we will go to Antoine's as well. You must see Antoine's new piece. He is doing great work. We kept dinner up to an unconscionable hour. I had much to tell of London, and much to hear of Paris. And we talked and drank coffee till one o'clock. And when I proposed supper, Oscar accepted the idea with enthusiasm. I have often lunched with you from two o'clock till nine, Frank, and now I am going to dine with you from nine o'clock till breakfast tomorrow morning. What shall we drink? I asked. The same champagne, Frank, don't you think? He said, pulling his jowl. There is no wine so inspiring as that dry champagne with the exquisite bouquet. You were the first to say my plays were the champagne of literature. When we came out it was three o'clock, and I was tired and sleepy with my journey, and Oscar had drunk perhaps more than was good for him. Knowing how he hated walking, I got a voiture de sel, and told him to take it, and I would walk to my hotel. He thanked me and seemed to hesitate. What is it now, I asked, wanting to get to bed? Just a word with you, he said, and drew me away from the carriage where the chasseur was waiting with the rug. When he got me three or four paces away, he said hesitatingly, Frank, could you let me have a few pounds? I am very hard up. I stared at him. I had given him a check at the beginning of the dinner. Had he forgotten? Or did he perchance want to keep the hundred pounds intact for some reason? Suddenly it occurred to me that he might be without even enough for the carriage. I took out a hundred-frank note and gave it to him. Thank you so much," he said, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket. It's very kind of you. You will turn up to-morrow at lunch at one, I said, as I put him into the little broom. Yes, of course, yes," he cried, and I turned away. Next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with some embarrassment. Frank, I want to ask you something. I'm rarely confused about last night. We dined most wisely, if too well. This morning I found you had given me a check, and I found besides in my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. Did I ask you for it at the end? Tap you, the French call it," he added, trying to laugh. I nodded. How dreadful, he cried, how dreadful poverty is. I had forgotten that you had given me a check, and I was so hard up, so afraid you might go away without giving me anything that I asked you for it. Isn't poverty dreadful? I nodded. I could not say a word. The fact told so much. The chastened mood of self-condemnation did not last long with him or go deep. Soon he was talking as merrily and gaily as ever. Before parting I said to him, you won't forget that you were going on Thursday night. Oh, really," he cried, to my surprise, Thursday is very near. I don't know whether I shall be able to come. What on earth do you mean?" I asked. The truth is, you know, I have debts to pay, and I have not enough. But I will give you more," I cried. What will clear you? Fifty more, I think, will do. How good you are! I will bring it with me to-morrow morning. In notes, please, will you? French money. I find I shall want it, to pay some little things at once, and the time is short. I thought nothing of the matter. The next day at lunch I gave him the money in French notes. That night I said to him, you know we are going away tomorrow evening. I hope he'll be ready. I have got the tickets for the train de luxe. Oh, I'm so sorry," he cried, I can't be ready. What is it now? I asked. Well, it's money. Some more debts have come in. Why will you not be frank with me, and tell me what you owe? I will give you a check for it. I don't want to drag it out of you bit by bit. Tell me a sum that will make you free, and I will give it to you. I want you to have a perfect six months, and how can you if you are bothered with debts? How kind you are to me! Do you really mean it? Of course I do. Rarely," he said, yes, I said, tell me what it is. I think, I believe, would another fifty be too much? I will give it to you tomorrow. Are you sure that will be enough? Oh yes, Frank, but let's go on Sunday. Sunday is such a good day for travelling, and it's always so dull everywhere. We might just as well spend it on the train. Besides, no one travels on Sunday in France, so we are sure to be able to take our ease in our train. Won't Sunday do, Frank? Of course it will," I replied, laughing. But a day or two later he was again embarrassed, and again told me it was money. And then he confessed to me that he was afraid at first I should not have paid all his debts, if I had known how much they were. And so he thought by telling me of them little by little, he would make sure at least of something. This pitiful, pitiable confession depressed me on his account. It showed practice in such petty tricks, and all too little pride. Of course it did not alter my admiration of his qualities, nor weaken in any degree my resolve to give him a fair chance. If he could be saved, I was determined to save him. We met at the Gare de Lyon on Sunday evening. I found he had dined at the buffet. There was a surprising number of empty bottles on the table. He seemed terribly depressed. Someone was dining with me, Frank, a friend. He offered by way of explanation. Why did he not wait? I should like to have seen him. Oh! he was no one you would have cared about, Frank," he replied. I sat with him and took a cup of coffee whilst waiting for the train. He was wretchedly gloomy, scarcely spoke indeed. I could not make it out. From time to time he sighed heavily, and I noticed that his eyes were red as if he had been crying. What is the matter, I asked? I will tell you later, perhaps. It is very hard. Parting is like dying. And his eyes filled with tears. We were soon in the train running out into the night. I was as light-hearted as could be. At length I was free of journalism, I thought, and I was going to the south to write my Shakespeare book, and Oscar would work too, when the conditions were pleasant. But I could not win a single smile from him. He sat downcast, sighing hopelessly from time to time. What an earth's the matter, I cried. Here you are going to the sunshine, to blue skies, and the wine-tinted Mediterranean, and you're not content. We shall stop in a hotel near the sun-baked valley running down to the sea. You walk from the hotel over a carpet of pine needles, and when you get into the open, violets and anemones bloom about your feet, and the scent of rosemary and myrtle will be in your nostrils. Yet instead of singing for joy, the bird droops his feathers and hangs his head as if he had the pip. Oh, don't, he cried, don't. And he looked at me with tears filling his eyes. You don't know, Frank, what a great romantic passion is. Is that what you are suffering from? Yes, a great romantic passion. Could God, I laughed, who has inspired this new devotion? Don't make fun of me, Frank, or I will not tell you. But if you will listen, I will try to tell you all about it, for I think you should know. Besides, I think telling it may ease my pain. So come into the cabin and listen. Do you remember, once in the summer, you wired me from Calais to meet you at Mer's restaurant, meaning to go afterwards to Antoine's theatre, and I was very late. You remember, the evening Rostin was dining at the next table. Well, it was that evening. I drove up to Mer's in time, and I was just getting out of the Victoria when a little soldier passed and our eyes met. My heart stood still. He had great dark eyes and an exquisite olive dark face, a Florentine bronze, Frank, by a great master. He looked like Napoleon when he was first consul, only less imperious, more beautiful. I got out hypnotised and followed him down the boulevard as in a dream. The cauchet came running after me, I remember, and I gave him a five-frank piece and waved him off. I had no idea what I owed him. I did not want to hear his voice. It might break the spell. Mutely I followed my fate. I overtook the boy in a short time and asked him to come and have a drink, and he said to me in his quaint French way, ce n'est pas de refus, too good to refuse. We went into a café, and I ordered something, I forget what, and we began to talk. I told him I liked his face. I had had a friend once like him, and I wanted to know all about him. I was in a hurry to meet you, but I had to make friends with him first. He began by telling me all about his mother, Frank, yes, his mother. Oscar smiled here in spite of himself. But at last I got from him that he was always free on Thursdays, and he would be very glad to see me then, though he did not know what I could see in him to like. I found out that the thing he desired most in the world was a bicycle. He talked of nickel-plated handlebars and chains, and finally I told him it might be arranged. He was very grateful, and so he made a rendezvous for next Thursday, and I came on at once to dine with you. "'Courtness!' I cried, laughing, a soldier, a nickel-plated bicycle, and a great romantic passion. If I had said a brooch or a necklace, some trinket which would have cost ten times as much, you would have found it quite natural.' "'Yes,' I admitted, but I don't think I'd have introduced the necklace the first evening if there had been any romance in the affair, and the nickel-plated bicycle seems to me irresistibly comic.' "'Frank!' he cried reprovingly, I cannot talk to you if you laugh. I am quite serious. I don't believe you know what a great romantic passion is. I am going to convince you that you don't know the meaning of it.' "'Fire away,' I replied. I am here to be convinced, but I don't think he will teach me that there is any romance, except where there is another sex.' "'Don't talk to me of the other sex,' he cried, with distaste in voice and manner. First of all, in beauty there is no comparison between a boy and a girl. Think of the enormous fat hips which every sculptor has to tone down and make lighter, and the great udder breasts which the artist has to make small and round and firm, and then picture the exquisite slim lines of a boy's figure. No one who loves beauty can hesitate for a moment. The Greeks knew that. They had the sense of plastic beauty, and they understood that there is no comparison. You must not say that,' I replied, you are going too far. The venous of Milo is as fine as any Apollo in sheer beauty. The flowing curves appeal to me more than your weedy lines. "'Perhaps they do,' Frank,' he retorted, but you must see that the boy is far more beautiful. It is your sex-instinct, your sinful sex-instinct, which prevents you from worshipping the higher form of beauty. Height and length of limb give distinction, slightness gives grace, women are squat. You must admit that the boy's figure is more beautiful, the appeal it makes far higher, more spiritual. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, I barked. Your sculptor knows it is just as hard to find an ideal boy's figure as an ideal girl's, and if he has to modify the most perfect girl's figure, he has to modify the most perfect boy's figure as well. If he refines the girl's breasts and hips, he has to pad the boy's ribs and tone down the great staring knee-bones and the unlovely large ankles. But please go on, I enjoy your special pleading, and your romantic passion interests me. Though you have not yet come to the romance, let alone the passion." "'Oh, Frank,' he cried, the story is full of romance. Every meeting was an event in my life. You have no idea how intelligent he is. Every evening we spent together he was different. He had grown, developed. I lent him books and he read them, and his mind opened from week to week like a flower. Till in a short time, a few months, he became an exquisite companion and disciple. Frank, no girl grows like that. They have no minds, and what intelligence they have is all given to wretched vanities and personal jealousies. There is no intellectual companionship possible with them. They want to talk of dress and not of ideas, and how persons look and not of what they are. How can you have the flower of romance without a brotherhood of soul?" "'Sisterhood of soul seems to me infinitely finer,' I said, but go on." "'I shall convince you,' he declared. I must be able to, because all reason is on my side. Let me give you one instance. Of course my boy had his bicycle. He used to come to me on it, and go to and fro from the barracks on it. When you came to Paris in September, you invited me to dine one night, one Thursday night, when he was to come to me. I told him I had to go and dine with you. He didn't mind, but was glad when I said I had an English editor for a friend, glad that I should have someone to talk to about London and the people I used to know. If it had been a woman I loved, I should have been forced to tell lies. She would have been jealous of my past. I told him the truth, and when I spoke about you, he grew interested and excited, and at last he put a wish before me. He wanted to know if he might come and leave his bicycle outside, and look through the window of the restaurant, just to see us at dinner. I told him there might possibly be women guests. He replied that he would be delighted to see me in dress clothes, talking to gentlemen and ladies. "'Might he come,' he persisted. Of course I said he could come, and he came, but I never saw him. The next time we met, he told me all about it, how he had picked you out from my description of you, and how he knew Boyer from his likeness to Dumapère, and he was delightful about it all. Now Frank, would any girl have come to see you enjoying yourself with other people? Would any girl have stared through the window and been glad to see you inside amusing yourself with other men and women? You know there's not a girl on earth with such unselfish devotion. There is no comparison, I tell you, between the boy and the girl. I say again deliberately, you don't know what a great romantic passion is, or the high unselfishness of true love. You have put it with extraordinary ability, I said, as of course I knew you would. I think I can understand the charm of such companionship, but only from the young boy's point of view, not from yours. I can understand how you have opened to him a new heaven and a new earth, but what has he given you? Nothing. On the other hand, any finely gifted girl would have given you something. If you had really touched her heart, you would have found in her some instinctive tenderness, some proof of unselfish, exquisite devotion that would have made your eyes prickle with a sense of inferiority. After all, the essence of love, the finest spirit of that companionship you speak about, of the sisterhood of soul, is that the other person should quicken you too. Listen to you new horizons, discover new possibilities, and how could your soldier boy help you in any way? He brought you no new ideas, no new feelings, could reveal no new thoughts to you. I can see no romance, no growth of soul in such a connection, but the girl is different from the man in all ways. You have as much to learn from her as she has from you, and neither of you can come to ideal growth in any other way. You are both half-parts of humanity, compliments, and in need of each other. You have put it very cunningly, Frank, as I expected you would, to return your compliment, but you must admit that with the boy at any rate, you have no jealousy, no mean enviings, no silly inanities. There it is, Frank, some of us hate cats. I can give reasons for my dislike, which to me are conclusive. The boy who would beg for a bicycle is not likely to be without mean enviings, I replied. Now you have talked about romance and companionship, I went on, but can you really feel passion? Frank, what a silly question! Do you remember how Socrates says he felt, do you remember how Socrates says he felt when the Chlamis blew aside and showed him the limbs of Charmides? Don't you remember how the blood throbbed in his veins, and how he grew blind with desire? A scene more magical than the passionate love-lines of Sappho, there is no other passion to be compared with it. A woman's passion is degrading, she is continually tempting you. She wants your desire as a satisfaction for her vanity more than anything else, and her vanity is insatiable if her desire is weak, and so she continually tempts you to excess, and then blames you for the physical satiety and disgust which she herself has created. With the boy there is no vanity in the matter, no jealousy, and therefore none of the tempting, but a tenth part of the coarseness, and consequently desire is always fresh and keen. Oh, Frank, believe me, you don't know what a great romantic passion is. What you say only shows how little you know women, I replied. If you explained all this to the girl who loves you, she would see it at once, and her tenderness would grow with her self-abnegation. We all grow by giving. If the woman cares more than the man for caresses and kindness, it is because she feels more tenderness, and is capable of intense devotion. You don't know what you are talking about, Frank, he retorted. You repeat the old accepted common places. The boy came to the station with me to-night. He knew I was going away for six months. His heart was like lead, tears gathered in his eyes again and again in spite of himself, and yet he tried to be gay and bright for my sake. He wanted to show me how glad he was that I should be happy, how thankful he was for all I had done for him, and the new mental life I had created in him. He did his best to keep my courage up. I cried, but he shook his tears away. Six months will soon be over, he said, and perhaps you will come back to me, and I shall be glad again. Meantime he will write charming letters to me, I'm sure. Would any girl take a parting like that? No. She would be jealous and envious, and wonder why you were enjoying yourself in the south while she was condemned to live in the rainy cold north. Would she ask you to tell her of all the beautiful girls you met, and whether they were charming and bright, as the boy asked me to tell him of all the interesting people I should meet, so that he too might take an interest in them? A girl in his place would have been ill with envy and malice and jealousy. Again I repeat, you don't know what a high romantic passion is. Your argument is illogical, I cried. If the girl is jealous, it is because she has given herself more completely. Her exclusiveness is the other side of her devotion and tenderness. She wants to do everything for you, to be with you, and help you in every way. And in case of illness or poverty or danger, you would find how much more she had to give than your red-breached soldier. That's merely a rude jibe and not an argument, Frank. As good an argument as your cats, I replied, your little soldier-boy with his nickel-plated bicycle only makes me grin. And I grinned. You are unpardonable, he cried, unpardonable, and in your soul you know that all the weight of argument is on my side. In your soul you must know it. What is the food of passion, Frank, but beauty, beauty alone, beauty always, and in beauty of form and vigor of life there is no comparison. If you loved beauty as intensely as I do, you would feel as I feel. It is beauty which gives me joy, makes me drunk as with wine, blind with insatiable desire.