. I found that his choice of words was poor, anything but good;
his prose is wooden....

"Of course he's not a poet," he broke off contemptuously, "even you must
admit that."

"I know what you mean," I replied; "though I should have to make a vast
reservation in favour of the man who wrote 'The Ballad of Reading
Gaol.'"

"One ballad doesn't make a man a poet," he barked; "I mean by poet one
to whom verse lends power: in that sense he's not a poet and I am." His
tone was that of defiant challenge.

"You are certainly," I replied.

"Well, I did the translation of 'Salome' very carefully, as no one else
could have done it," and he flushed angrily, "and all the while Oscar
kept on altering it for the worse. At last I had to tell him the truth,
and we had a row. He imagines he's the greatest person in the world, and
the only person to be considered. His conceit is stupid.... I helped[35]
him again and again with that 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' you're always
praising: I suppose he'd deny that now.

"He's got his money back; what more can he want? He disgusts me when he
begs."

I could not contain myself altogether.

"He seems to blame you," I said quietly, "for egging him on to that
insane action against your father which brought him to ruin."

"I've no doubt he'd find some reason to blame me," he whipped out. "How
did I know how the case would go?... Why did he take my advice, if he
didn't want to? He was surely old enough to know his own interest....
He's simply disgusting now; he's getting fat and bloated, and always
demanding money, money, money, like a daughter of the horse-leech--just
as if he had a claim to it."

I could not stand it any longer; I had to try to move him to kindness.

"Sometimes one gives willingly to a man one has never had anything from.
Misery and want in one we like and admire have a very strong claim."

"I do not see that there is any claim at all," he cried bitterly, as if
the very word maddened him, "and I am not going to pamper him any more.
He could earn all the money he wants if he would only write; but he
won't do anything. He is lazy, and getting lazier and lazier every day;
and he drinks far too much. He is intolerable. I thought when he kept
asking me for that money to-night, he was like an old prostitute."

"Good God!" I cried. "Good God! Has it come to that between you?"

"Yes," he repeated, not heeding what I said, "he was just like an old
fat prostitute," and he gloated