“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 anyone I have ever seen.”

“It is true,” he cried, his face lighting up quickly, “more than anyone, 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 cochers and sergents-de-ville; workers and beggars, pimps and prostitutes—­all please me to the soul, charm me, and if you would 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 you 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 rooms 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.

FOOTNOTES: 

[25] Cfr. Appendix.

[26] See Appendix.

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 Hardwicke 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.