“‘I am the vicar of the parish,’ he bowed pompously.

“‘I’m delighted to see you,’ I said, getting up and draping myself carefully, ’you have come just in time to enjoy a perfectly Greek scene.  I regret that I am scarcely fit to receive you, and Bosie there’—­and I pointed to Bosie lying on the grass.  The vicar turned his head and saw Bosie’s white limbs; the sight was too much for him; he got very red, gave a gasp and fled from the place.

“I simply sat down in my chair and shrieked with laughter.  How he may have described the scene, what explanation he gave of it, what vile gloss he may have invented, I don’t know and I don’t care.  I have no doubt he wagged his head and pursed his lips and looked unutterable things.  But really it takes a saint to suffer such fools gladly.”

I could not help smiling when I thought of the vicar’s face, but Oscar’s tone was not pleasant.

The change in him had gone further than I had feared.  He was now utterly contemptuous of criticism and would listen to no counsel.  He was gross, too, the rich food and wine seemed to ooze out of him and his manner was defiant, hard.  He was like some great pagan determined to live his own life to the very fullest, careless of what others might say or think or do.  Even the stories which he wrote about this time show the worst side of his paganism: 

“When Jesus was minded to return to Nazareth, Nazareth was so changed that He no longer recognised His own city.  The Nazareth where he had lived was full of lamentations and tears; this city was filled with outbursts of laughter and song....

“Christ went out of the house and, behold, in the street he saw a woman whose face and raiment were painted and whose feet were shod with pearls, and behind her walked a man who wore a cloak of two colours, and whose eyes were bright with lust.  And Christ went up to the man and laid His hand on his shoulder, and said to him, ’Tell me, why art thou following this woman, and why dost thou look at her in such wise?’ The man turned round, recognised Him and said, ’I was blind; Thou didst heal me; what else should I do with my sight?’”

The same note is played on in two or three more incidents, but the one I have given is the best, and should have been allowed to stand alone.  It has been called blasphemous; it is not intentionally blasphemous; as I have said, Oscar always put himself quite naively in the place of any historical character.

The disdain of public opinion which Oscar now showed not only in his writings, but in his answers to criticism, quickly turned the public dislike into aggressive hatred.  In 1894 a book appeared, “The Green Carnation,” which was a sort of photograph of Oscar as a talker and a caricature of his thought.  The gossipy story had a surprising success, altogether beyond its merits, which simply testified to the intense interest the suspicion of extraordinary viciousness has for common minds.  Oscar’s genius was not given in the book at all, but his humour was indicated and a malevolent doubt of his morality insisted upon again and again.  Rumour had it that the book was true in every particular, that Mr. Hichens had taken down Oscar’s talks evening after evening and simply reproduced them.  I asked Oscar if this was true.