imply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who
spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all the
passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through
which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere
artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue,
as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The
style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and
obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical
expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterises the work of
some of the finest artists of the French school of _Symbolistes_. There
were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour.
The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical
philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the
spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of
a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense
seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as
it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced
in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of
reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling
day and creeping shadows.

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed
through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no
more. Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the
lateness of the hour, he got up, and, going into the next room, placed
the book on the little Florentine table that always stood at his
bedside, and began to dress for dinner.

It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found
Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.

"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault.
That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was
going."

"Yes: I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his
chair.

"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a
great difference."

"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. And they passed
into the dining-room.

CHAPTER XI

For years, Dor