one would
have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation. He always
lived in the day and rather heedlessly.

As soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to France, and
went to stay at the Hotel de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little
village near Dieppe. M. Andre Gide, who called on him there almost as
soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time. He
tells how delighted he was to find in him the "Oscar Wilde of old," no
longer the sensualist puffed out with pride and good living, but "the
sweet Wilde" of the days before 1891. "I found myself taken back, not
two years," he says, "but four or five. There was the same dreamy look,
the same amused smile, the same voice."

He told M. Gide that prison had completely changed him, had taught him
the meaning of pity. "You know," he went on, "how fond I used to be of
'Madame Bovary,' but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and
that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. It is the
sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse, and by which
it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, my dear fellow, it was
pity which prevented my killing myself? During the first six months in
prison I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that I wanted to
kill myself; but what kept me from doing so was looking at the others,
and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, and feeling sorry for
them. Oh dear! what a wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it."

He was speaking in a low voice without any excitement.

"Have you ever learned how wonderful a thing pity is? For my part I
thank God every night, yes, on my knees I thank God for having taught it
to me. I went into prison with a heart of stone, thinking only of my own
pleasure; but now my heart is utterly broken--pity has entered into my
heart. I have learned now that pity is the greatest and the most
beautiful thing in the world. And that is why I cannot bear ill-will
towards those who caused my suffering and those who condemned me; no,
nor to anyone, because without them I should not have known all that.
Alfred Douglas writes me terrible letters. He says he does not
understand me, that he does not understand that I do not wish everyone
ill, and that everyone has been horrid to me. No, he does not understand
me. He cannot understand me any more. But I keep on telling him that in
every letter: we cannot follow the same road. He has his and it is