I noticed now that this trait 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 Curzon (I beg his pardon, Lord Curzon) 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.

“Do you see that?” cried Oscar angrily; “fancy George Curzon 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 to-day, can only learn from the man who is just one step above himself, and so the George Curzons come to success in life.  That, too, is the secret of the popularity of this or that writer.  Hall Caine is an even larger George Curzon, a better endowed mediocrity.”

“But why should he have fame and state and power?” Oscar cried indignantly.

“State and power, because he is George Curzon, 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-leaf of his couch, but how grossly he is over-estimated and over-rewarded....  Do you know Wilfred Blunt?”

“I have met him,” I replied, “but don’t know him.  We 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 Crabbett 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 Crabbett, 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 new-comer.  Blunt took the idea, no doubt, from the custom of the French Academy.  Well, he asked me down to Crabbett Park, and George Curzon, if you please, was the poet picked to make the speech about me.”