ourself 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 to us the most marvellous
of all gospels, the gospel of gold. I think he saw the effect he had
produced on me, for some days afterwards he wrote and asked me to come
and see him. He was living then in Park Lane, in the house Lord Woolcomb
has now. I remember so well how, with a strange smile on his pale,
curved lips, he led me through his wonderful picture gallery, showed me
his tapestries, his enamels, his jewels, his carved ivories, made me
wonder at the strange loveliness of the luxury in which he lived; and
then told me that luxury was nothing but a background, a painted scene in
a play, and that power, power over other men, power over the world, was
the one thing worth having, the one supreme pleasure worth knowing, the
one joy one never tired of, and that in our century only the rich
possessed it.

LORD GORING. [_With great deliberation_.] A thoroughly shallow creed.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [_Rising_.] I didn't think so then. I don't think
so now. Wealth has given me enormous power. It gave me at the very
outset of my life freedom, and freedom is everything. You have never
been poor, and never known what ambition is. You cannot understand what
a wonderful chance the Baron gave me. Such a chance as few men get.

LORD GORING. Fortunately for them, if one