ice decency to antithesis, and Ausonius, whose
ribald verses are like monkish recreation; yet he had withal a pretty
currency of honest silver Latin, Christian though he was. You must read
your Latin authors well, for, since you must be decadent, it is better
to decay from a good source. And neglect not the Middle Ages. You will
glide most easily into them from the witches and robbers of Apuleius.
You will read Boccaccio, whose tales are intaglios carved with
exquisitely licentious and Lilliputian scenes. Neither forget Villon,
whose light ladies seem ever to move elusively in close-cut gowns of
cloth-of-gold and incredibly tall steeple-hats. But even with Villon the
world becomes complicated, and you will soon reach the temperamental
entanglements of the nineteenth century, for you may avoid the coarse,
the beery and besotted obviousness of the Georgian age.

"But I like the eighteenth century almost best of all," protested
Michael.

"Then cure yourself of that most lamentable and most demode taste, or I
shall presently believe that you read a page or two of Boswell's Life of
Johnson every morning, while the water is running into your bath. You
can never be a true decadent, treading delicately over the garnered
perfection of the world's art, if you really admire and enjoy the
eighteenth century."

Michael, however, looked very doubtful over his demanded apostasy.

"But, never mind," Mr. Wilmot went on. "When you have read Barbey
d'Aurevilly and Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Catulle Mendes and
Verhaeren, when the Parnassians and Symbolists have illuminated you, and
you become an Interior person, when Aubrey Beardsley and Felicien Rops
have printed their fierce debauchery upon your imagination, then you
will be glad you have forsaken the eighteenth century. How crude is the
actual number eighteen, how far from the passionate mystery of seventeen
or the tired wisdom of nineteen! O wonderful nineteenth century, in
whose grey humid dusk you and I are lucky enough to live!"

"But what about the twentieth century?" asked Michael.

Mr. Wilmot started.

"Listen, and I will tell you my intention. Two more years have yet to
run before that garish and hideous date, prophetic of all that is bright
and new and abominably raw. But I shall have fled, how I know not; haply
mandragora will lure my weary mind to rest. I think I should like to die
as La Gioconda was painted, listening to flute-players in a curtained
alcove; or y