It was at this point that Montague dropped out of the race, and took to studying from the outside the mechanism of this young poet’s conversation.  Strathcona flouted the idea of a moral sense; but in reality he was quite dependent upon it—­his recipe for making epigrams was to take what other people’s moral sense made them respect, and identify it with something which their moral sense made them abhor.  Thus, for instance, the tale which he told about one of the members of his set, who was a relative of a bishop.  The great man had occasion to rebuke him for his profligate ways, declaring in the course of his lecture that he was living off the reputation of his father; to which the boy made the crushing rejoinder:  “It may be bad to live off the reputation of one’s father, but it’s better than living off the reputation of God.”—­This was very subtle and it was necessary to ponder it.  God was dead; and the worthy bishop did not know it!  But let him take a new God, who had no reputation, and go out into the world and make a living out of him!

Then Strathcona discussed literature.  He paid his tribute to the “Fleurs de Mal” and the “Songs before Sunrise”; but most, he said, he owed to “the divine Oscar.”  This English poet of many poses and some vices the law had seized and flung into jail; and since the law is a thing so brutal and wicked that whoever is touched by it is made thereby a martyr and a hero, there had grown up quite a cult about the memory of “Oscar.”  All up-to-date poets imitated his style and his attitude to life; and so the most revolting of vices had the cloak of romance flung about them—­were given long Greek and Latin names, and discussed with parade of learning as revivals of Hellenic ideals.  The young men in Strathcona’s set referred to each other as their “lovers”; and if one showed any perplexity over this, he was regarded, not with contempt—­for it was not aesthetic to feel contempt—­but with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, intended to annihilate.

One must not forget, of course, that these young people were poets, and to that extent were protected from their own doctrines.  They were interested, not in life, but in making pretty verses about life; there were some among them who lived as cheerful ascetics in garret rooms, and gave melodious expression to devilish emotions.  But, on the other hand, for every poet, there were thousands who were not poets, but people to whom life was real.  And these lived out the creed, and wrecked their lives; and with the aid of the poet’s magic, the glamour of melody and the fire divine, they wrecked the lives with which they came into contact.  The new generation of boys and girls were deriving their spiritual sustenance from the poetry of Baudelaire and Wilde; and rushing with the hot impulsiveness of youth into the dreadful traps which the traders in vice prepared for them.  One’s heart bled to see them, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, pursuing the hem of the Muse’s robe in brothels and dens of infamy!