“And what have I to live for, Bobbie?” he asked gravely.  And Ross looking at him and noting the wreck—­the symptoms of old age and broken health—­could only bow his head and walk on with him in silence.  What indeed had he to live for who had abandoned all the fair uses of life?

The second scene is horrible:  but is, so to speak, the inevitable resultant of the first, and has its own awful moral.  Ross tells how he came one morning to Oscar’s death-bed and found him practically insensible:  he describes the dreadful loud death-rattle of his breath, and says:  “terrible offices had to be carried out.”

The truth is still more appalling.  Oscar had eaten too much and drunk too much almost habitually ever since the catastrophe in Naples.  The dreadful disease from which he was suffering, or from the after effects of which he was suffering, weakens all the tissues of the body, and this weakness is aggravated by drinking wine and still more by drinking spirits.  Suddenly, as the two friends sat by the bedside in sorrowful anxiety, there was a loud explosion:  mucus poured out of Oscar’s mouth and nose, and—­

Even the bedding had to be burned.

If it is true that all those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, it is no less certain that all those who live for the body shall perish by the body, and there is no death more degrading.

* * * * *

One more scene, and this the last, and I shall have done.

When Robert Ross was arranging to bury Oscar at Bagneux he had already made up his mind as soon as he could to transfer his body to Pere Lachaise and erect over his remains some worthy memorial.  It became the purpose of his life to pay his friend’s debts, annul his bankruptcy, and publish his books in suitable manner; in fine to clear Oscar’s memory from obloquy while leaving to his lovable spirit the shining raiment of immortality.  In a few years he had accomplished all but one part of his high task.  He had not only paid off all Oscar Wilde’s debts; but he had managed to remit thousands of pounds yearly to his children, and had established his popularity on the widest and surest foundation.

He crossed to Paris with Oscar’s son, Vyvyan, to render the last service to his friend.  When preparing the body for the grave years before Ross had taken medical advice as to what should be done to make his purpose possible.  The doctors told him to put Wilde’s body in quicklime, like the body of the man in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”  The quicklime, they said, would consume the flesh and leave the white bones—­the skeleton—­intact, which could then be moved easily.

To his horror, when the grave was opened, Ross found that the quicklime, instead of destroying the flesh, had preserved it.  Oscar’s face was recognisable, only his hair and beard had grown long.  At once Ross sent the son away, and when the sextons were about to use their shovels, he ordered them to desist, and descending into the grave, moved the body with his own hands into the new coffin in loving reverence.