lamentations and tears; this city was filled with outbursts of laughter and
song. . . . .

"Christ went out of the house and, behold, in the street he saw a woman whose
face and raiment were painted and whose feet were shod with pearls, and behind
her walked a man who wore a cloak of two colours, and whose eyes were bright
with lust. And Christ went up to the man and laid His hand on his shoulder, and
said to him, 'Tell me, why art thou following this woman, and why dost thou look
at her in such wise?' The man turned round, recognised Him and said, 'I was
blind; Thou didst heal me; what else should I do with my sight?'"

The same note is played on in two or three more incidents, but the one I have
given is the best, and should have been allowed to stand alone. It has been
called blasphemous; it is not intentionally blasphemous; as I have said, Oscar
always put himself quite naively in the place of any historical character.

The disdain of public opinion which Oscar now showed not only in his writings,
but in his answers to criticism, quickly turned the public dislike into
aggressive hatred. In 1894 a book appeared, "The Green Carnation," which was a
sort of photograph of Oscar as a talker and a caricature of his thought. The
gossipy story had a surprising success, altogether beyond its merits, which
simply testified to the intense interest the suspicion of extraordinary
viciousness has for common minds. Oscar's genius was not given in the book
at all, but his humour was indicated and a malevolent doubt of his morality
insisted upon again and again. Rumour had it that the book was true in every
particular, that Mr. Hichens had taken down Oscar's talks evening after evening
and simply reproduced them. I asked Oscar if this was true.

"True enough, Frank," he replied with a certain contempt which was foreign to
him. "Hichens got to know Bosie Douglas in Egypt. They went up the Nile