condemnation, by Miss S----, Ross, More Adey, and others. Still his
refusal of such a sum as that offered by the New York paper shows how
utterly contemptuous he was of money, even at a moment when one would
have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation. He always
lived in the day and rather heedlessly.

As soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to France, and
went to stay at the Hotel de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little
village near Dieppe. M. André Gide, who called on him there almost as
soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time. He
tells how delighted he was to find in him the "Oscar Wilde of old," no
longer the sensualist puffed out with pride and good living, but "the
sweet Wilde" of the days before 1891. "I found myself taken back, not
two years," he says, "but four or five. There was the same dreamy look,
the same amused smile, the same voice."

He told M. Gide that prison had completely changed him, had taught him
the meaning of pity. "You know," he went on, "how fond I used to be of
'Madame Bovary,' but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and
that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. It is the
sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse, and by which
it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, my dear fellow, it was
pity which prevented my killing myself? During the first six months in
prison I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that I wanted to
kill myself; but what kept me from doing so was looking at the others,
and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, and feeling sorry for
them. Oh dear! what a wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it."

He was speaking in a low voice without any excitement.