ng his astonishment, she cried to him in
her quick, abrupt way:

"N'est-ce pas, M. Wilde, que je suis la femme la plus laide de France?"
(Come, confess, Mr. Wilde, that I am the ugliest woman in France.)

Bowing low, Oscar replied with smiling courtesy:

"Du monde, Madame, du monde." (In the world, madame, in the world.)

No one could help laughing; the retort was irresistible. He should have
said: "Au monde, madame, au monde," but the meaning was clear.

Sometimes this thought-quickness and happy dexterity had to be used in
self-defence. Jean Lorrain was the wittiest talker I have ever heard in
France, and a most brilliant journalist. His life was as abandoned as it
could well be; in fact, he made a parade of strange vices. In the days
of Oscar's supremacy he always pretended to be a friend and admirer.
About this time Oscar wanted me to know Stephane Mallarme. He took me to
his rooms one afternoon when there was a reception. There were a great
many people present. Mallarme was standing at the other end of the room
leaning against the chimney piece. Near the door was Lorrain, and we
both went towards him, Oscar with outstretched hands:

"Delighted to see you, Jean."

For some reason or other, most probably out of tawdry vanity, Lorrain
folded his arms theatrically and replied:

"I regret I cannot say as much: I can no longer be one of your friends,
M. Wilde."

The insult was stupid, brutal; yet everyone was on tiptoe to see how
Oscar would answer it.

"How true that is," he said quietly, as quickly as if he had expected
the traitor-thrust, "how true and how sad! At a certain time in life all
of us who have done anything like you and me, Lorrain, must realise that
we no longer have any friends in this world; but only lovers." (Plus
d'amis, seulement des amants.)

A smile of approval lighted up every face.

"Well said, well said," was the general exclamation. His humour was
almost invariably generous, kind.

One day in a Paris studio the conversation turned on the character of
Marat: one Frenchman would have it that he was a fiend, another saw in
him the incarnation of the revolution, a third insisted that he was
merely the gamin of the Paris streets grown up. Suddenly one turned to
Oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his opinion: he took the ball
at once, gravely.

"_Ce malheureux! Il n'avait pas de veine--pour une fois qu'il a pris un
bain_...." (Poor devil, he was unlucky! To come to such grief f