“You are certainly,” I replied.

“Well, I did the translation of ‘Salome’ very carefully, as no one else could have done it,” and he flushed angrily, “and all the while Oscar kept on altering it for the worse.  At last I had to tell him the truth, and we had a row.  He imagines he’s the greatest person in the world, and the only person to be considered.  His conceit is stupid....  I helped[35] him again and again with that ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ you’re always praising:  I suppose he’d deny that now.

“He’s got his money back; what more can he want?  He disgusts me when he begs.”

I could not contain myself altogether.

“He seems to blame you,” I said quietly, “for egging him on to that insane action against your father which brought him to ruin.”

“I’ve no doubt he’d find some reason to blame me,” he whipped out.  “How did I know how the case would go?...  Why did he take my advice, if he didn’t want to?  He was surely old enough to know his own interest....  He’s simply disgusting now; he’s getting fat and bloated, and always demanding money, money, money, like a daughter of the horse-leech—­just as if he had a claim to it.”

I could not stand it any longer; I had to try to move him to kindness.

“Sometimes one gives willingly to a man one has never had anything from.  Misery and want in one we like and admire have a very strong claim.”

“I do not see that there is any claim at all,” he cried bitterly, as if the very word maddened him, “and I am not going to pamper him any more.  He could earn all the money he wants if he would only write; but he won’t do anything.  He is lazy, and getting lazier and lazier every day; and he drinks far too much.  He is intolerable.  I thought when he kept asking me for that money to-night, he was like an old prostitute.”

“Good God!” I cried.  “Good God!  Has it come to that between you?”

“Yes,” he repeated, not heeding what I said, “he was just like an old fat prostitute,” and he gloated over the word, “and I told him so.”

I looked at the man but could not speak; indeed there was nothing to be said.  Surely at last, I thought, Oscar Wilde has reached the lowest depth.  I could think of nothing but Oscar; this hard, small, bitter nature made Oscar’s suffering plain to me.

“As I can do no good,” I said, “do you mind letting me sleep?  I’m simply tired to death.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking for his hat; “will you come out in the morning and see the ’gees’?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied, “I’m incapable of a resolution now, I’m so tired I would rather sleep.  I think I’ll go up to Paris in the morning.  I have something rather urgent to do.”

He said “Good night” and went away.

I lay awake, my eyes prickling with sorrow and sympathy for poor Oscar, insulted in his misery and destitution, outraged and trodden on by the man he had loved, by the man who had thrust him into the Pit....[36]