romantically and ends in
laughter--_tabulae solvuntur risu_. I taught him so much, Frank, that he
was made a corporal and forthwith a nursemaid fell in love with his
stripes. He's devoted to her: I suppose he likes to play teacher in his
turn."

"And so the great romantic passion comes to this tame conclusion?"

"What would you, Frank? Whatever begins must also end."

"Is there anyone else?" I asked, "or have you learned reason at last?"

"Of course there's always someone else, Frank: change is the essence of
passion: the _reason_ you talk of is merely another name for impotence."

"Montaigne declares," I said, "that love belongs to early youth, 'the
next period after infancy,' is his phrase, but that is at the best a
Frenchman's view of it. Sophocles was nearer the truth when he called
himself happy in that age had freed him from the whip of passion. When
are you going to reach that serenity?"

"Never, Frank, never, I hope: life without desire would not be worth
living to me. As one gets older one is more difficult to please: but the
sting of pleasure is even keener than in youth and far more egotistic.

"One comes to understand the Marquis de Sade and that strange, scarlet
story of de Retz--the pleasure they got from inflicting pain, the
curious, intense underworld of cruelty--"

"That's unlike you, Oscar," I broke in. "I thought you shrank from
giving pain always: to me it's the unforgivable sin."

"To me, also," he rejoined instantly, "intellectually one may understand
it; but in reality it's horrible. I want my pleasure unembittered by any
drop of pain. That reminds me: I read a terrible, little book the other
day, Octave Mirbeau's 'Le Jardin des Supplices'; it is quite awful, a
_sadique_ joy in pain pulses through it; but for all that it's
wonderful. His soul seems to have wandered in fearsome places. You with
your contempt of fear, will face the book with courage--I--"

"I simply couldn't read it," I replied; "it was revolting to me,
impossible--"

"A sort of grey adder," he summed up and I nodded in complete agreement.

I passed the next winter on the Riviera. A speculation which I had gone
in for there had caused me heavy loss and much anxiety. In the spring I
returned to Paris, and of course, asked him to meet me. He was much
brighter than he had been for a long time. Lord Alfred Douglas, it
appeared, had come in for a large legacy from his father's estate and
had given him some money, and he was