es
deserve to be recorded; one was Lord Douglas of Hawick, the other a
clergyman, the Rev. Stewart Headlam. I offered to be one bail: but I
was not a householder at the time and my name was, therefore, not
acceptable. I suppose the Treasury objected, which shows, I am
inclined to think, some glimmering of sense on its part.

As soon as the bail was accepted I began to think of preparations for
Oscar's escape. It was high time something was done to save him from
the wolves. The day after his release a London morning journal was not
ashamed to publish what it declared was a correct analysis of the
voting of the jury on the various counts. According to this authority,
ten jurors were generally for conviction and two against, in the case
of Wilde; the statement was widely accepted because it added that the
voting was more favourable to Taylor than to Wilde, which was so
unexpected and so senseless that it carried with it a certain
plausibility: _Credo quia incredible_.

I had seen enough of English justice and English judges and English
journals to convince me that Oscar Wilde had no more chance of a fair
trial than if he had been an Irish "Invincible." Everyone had made up
his mind and would not even listen to reason: he was practically
certain to be convicted, and if convicted perfectly certain to be
punished with savage ferocity. The judge would probably think he was
showing impartiality by punishing him for his qualities of charm and
high intelligence. For the first time in my life I understood the full
significance of Montaigne's confession that if he were accused of
stealing the towers of Notre Dame, he would fly the kingdom rather
than risk a trial, and Montaigne was a lawyer. I set to work at once
to complete my preparations.

I did not think I ran any risk in helping Oscar to get away. The
newspapers had seized the opportunity of the trials before the
magistrate and before Mr. Justice Charles and had overwhelmed the
public with such a sea of nauseous filth and impurity as could only be
exposed to the public nostrils in pudibond England. Everyone, I
thought, must be sick of the testimony and eager to have done with the
whole thing. In this I may have been mistaken. The hatred of Wilde
seemed universal and extraordinarily malignant.

I wanted a steam yacht. Curiously enough on the very day when I was
thinking of running down to Cowes to hire one, a gentleman at lunch
mentioned that he had one in the Thames. I as