lose everything over a horrible scandal? If I am hounded from public
life?

LORD GORING. Robert, how could you have sold yourself for money?

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Excitedly.] I did not sell myself for money.
I bought success at a great price. That is all.

LORD GORING. [Gravely.] Yes; you certainly paid a great price for
it. But what first made you think of doing such a thing?

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Baron Arnheim.

LORD GORING. Damned scoundrel!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined
intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the
most intellectual men I ever met.

LORD GORING. Ah! I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more
to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a
great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I
suppose. But how did he do it? Tell me the whole thing.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Throws himself into an armchair by the
writing-table.] One night after dinner at Lord Radley's the Baron
began talking about success in modern life as something that one
could reduce to an absolutely definite science. With that
wonderfully fascinating quiet voice of his he expounded to us the
most terrible of all philosophies, the philosophy of power, preached