ll them fogies and old-fashioned and explain that they had
not a decalogue but a millelogue of sins forbidden and persons tabooed
because it was easier to condemn than to understand.

I remember a lunch once when he talked most brilliantly and finished
up by telling the story now published in his works as "A Florentine
Tragedy." He told it superbly, making it appear far more effective
than in its written form. A well-known actor, piqued at being
compelled to play listener, made himself ridiculous by half turning
his back on the narrator. But after lunch Willie Grenfell (now Lord
Desborough), a model English athlete gifted with peculiar intellectual
fairness, came round to me:

"Oscar Wilde is most surprising, most charming, a wonderful talker."

At the same moment Mr. K. H---- came over to us. He was a man who went
everywhere and knew everyone. He had quiet, ingratiating manners,
always spoke in a gentle smiling way and had a good word to say for
everyone, especially for women; he was a bachelor, too, and wholly
unattached. He surprised me by taking up Grenfell's praise and
breaking into a lyric:

"The best talker who ever lived," he said; "most extraordinary. I am
so infinitely obliged to you for asking me to meet him--a new delight.
He brings a supernal air into life. I am in truth indebted to
you"--all this in an affected purring tone. I noticed for the first
time that there was a touch of rouge on his face; Grenfell turned away
from us rather abruptly I thought.

At this first roseate dawn of complete success and universal applause,
new qualities came to view in Oscar. Praise gave him the fillip needed
in order to make him surpass himself. His talk took on a sort of
autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range; he now
used pathos as well as humour and generally brought in a story or
apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. His little weaknesses,
too, began to show themselves and they grew rankly in the sunshine. He
always wanted to do himself well, as the phrase goes, but now he began
to eat and drink more freely than before. His vanity became defiant.
I noticed one day that he had signed himself, Oscar O'Flahertie Wilde,
I think under some verses which he had contributed years before to his
College magazine. I asked him jokingly what the O'Flahertie stood for.
To my astonishment he answered me gravely:

"The O'Flaherties were kings in Ireland, and I have a right to the
name; I am desce