still I could not complain, and I put up with the discomforts.  But in a week or two the wine disappeared, and beer took its place, and I suggested I must be going.  He begged me so cordially not to go that I stayed on; but in a little while I noticed that the beer got less and less in quantity, and one day when I ventured to ask for a second bottle at lunch he told me that it cost a great deal and that he could not afford it.  Of course I made some decent pretext and left his house as soon as possible.  If one has to suffer poverty, one had best suffer alone.  But to get discomforts grudgingly and as a charity is the extremity of shame.  I prefer to look on it from the other side; M——­ grudging me his small beer belongs to farce.”

He spoke with bitterness and contempt, as he used never to speak of anyone.

I could not help sympathising with him, though visibly the cloth was wearing threadbare.  He asked me now at once for money, and a little later again and again.  Formerly he had invented pretexts; he had not received his allowance when he expected it, or he was bothered by a bill and so forth; but now he simply begged and begged, railing the while at fortune.  It was distressing.  He wanted money constantly, and spent it as always like water, without a thought.

I asked him one day whether he had seen much of his soldier boy since he had returned to Paris.

“I have seen him, Frank, but not often,” and he laughed gaily.  “It’s a farce-comedy; sentiment always begins romantically and ends in laughter—­tabulae solvuntur risu.  I taught him so much, Frank, that he was made a corporal and forthwith a nursemaid fell in love with his stripes.  He’s devoted to her:  I suppose he likes to play teacher in his turn.”

“And so the great romantic passion comes to this tame conclusion?”

“What would you, Frank?  Whatever begins must also end.”

“Is there anyone else?” I asked, “or have you learned reason at last?”

“Of course there’s always someone else, Frank:  change is the essence of passion:  the reason you talk of is merely another name for impotence.”

“Montaigne declares,” I said, “that love belongs to early youth, ’the next period after infancy,’ is his phrase, but that is at the best a Frenchman’s view of it.  Sophocles was nearer the truth when he called himself happy in that age had freed him from the whip of passion.  When are you going to reach that serenity?”

“Never, Frank, never, I hope:  life without desire would not be worth living to me.  As one gets older one is more difficult to please:  but the sting of pleasure is even keener than in youth and far more egotistic.

“One comes to understand the Marquis de Sade and that strange, scarlet story of de Retz—­the pleasure they got from inflicting pain, the curious, intense underworld of cruelty—­”

“That’s unlike you, Oscar,” I broke in.  “I thought you shrank from giving pain always:  to me it’s the unforgivable sin.”