"There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible
tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little
of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a
fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is
no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world
is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have
been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new
world....

"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of
every kind. I hated both...."

Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been,
how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than
pleasure.

"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child
or a star there is pain."


FOOTNOTES:

[3] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."

[4] I give Oscar's view of the trial just to show how his romantic
imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. Oscar could
only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his
informant--which adds to the interest of the story.

[5] Permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in France, even to