His teeth were atrociously decayed. We chatted. I spoke to him again of our last meeting in Algiers. I asked him whether he remembered that at the time he had almost predicted the catastrophe.

“Isn’t it so,” I said, “that you knew to a certain extent what was in store for you in England; you had foreseen the danger and rushed into it?…”

(Here I do not think that I can do better than recopy the pages in which I transcribed, a short time later, everything that I could recall of what he had said.)

“Oh! of course! of course, I knew that there would be a catastrophe—that one or another, I was expecting it. It had to end that way. Just imagine: it wasn’t possible to go any further; and it couldn’t last. That’s why, you see, it has to be ended. Prison has completely changed me. I counted on it for that.—B … is terrible; he can’t understand it; he can’t understand my not going back to the same existence; he accuses the others of having changed me … But one should never go back to the same existence … My life is like a work of art; an artist never starts the same thing twice … or if he does, it’s that he hasn’t succeeded. My life before prison was as successful as possible. Now it’s something that’s over.”

He lit a cigarette.

“The public is so dreadful that it never knows a man except by the last thing that he’s done. If I went back to Paris now, all they’d want to see in me is the … convict. I don’t want to reappear before writing a play. I must be let alone until then.”—And he added abruptly, “Haven’t I done well to come here? My friends wanted me to go to the Midi to rest; because, at the beginning, I was very tired. But I asked them to find me, in the North of France, a very small beach, where I wouldn’t see anyone, where it’s quite eold, where it’s almost never sunny … Oh! haven’t I done well to come and live in Berneval?” (Outside the weather was frightful.)

“Here everyone is very good to me. The curé in particular. I’m so fond of the little church! Would you believe that it’s called Notre Dame de Liesse! Aoh! isn’t it charming?—And now I know that I’m never again going to be able to leave Berneval, because this morning the curé offered me a permanent stall in the choir!

“And the customs officers! They were so bored here! so I asked them whether they hadn’t anything to read; and now I’m bringing them all the novels of Dumas the elder … I have to stay here, don’t I?

“And the children! aaah! they adore me! The day of the queen’s jubilee, I gave a great festival, a great dinner, to which I had forty school-children—all! all! with the teacher! to fête the queen! Isn’t that absolutely charming?… You know I’m very fond of the queen. I always have her portrait with me.” And he showed me, pinned to the wall, the portrait by Nicholson.

I got up to look at it; a small library was nearby; I looked at the books for a moment. I should have liked to get Wilde to talk to me more seriously. I sat down again, and with a bit of fear I asked him whether he had read The House of the Dead. He did not answer directly but began:

“The writers of Russia are extraordinary. What makes their books so great is the pity which they’ve put into them. At first, I liked Madame Bovary a great deal, didn’t I; but Flaubert didn’t want any pity in his work, and that’s why it seems small and closed; pity is the side on which a work is open, by which it appears infinite … Do you know, dear,1 that it’s pity that kept me from killing myself? Oh! during the first six months I was terribly unhappy; so unhappy that I wanted to kill myself; but what kept me from doing so was looking at the others, seeing that they were as unhappy as I, and having pity. O dear! it’s an admirable thing, pity; and I didn’t know what it was! (He was speaking in an almost low voice, without any exaltation.) Have you quite understood how admirable a thing pity is? As for me, I thank God each evening—yes, on my knees, I thank God for making me know what it is. For I entered prison with a heart of stone, thinking only of my pleasure, but now my heart has been completely broken; pity has entered my heart; I now understand that pity is the greatest, the most beautiful thing that there is in the world … And that’s why I can’t be angry with those who condemned me, nor with anyone, because without them I would not have known all that—B … writes me terrible letters; he tells me that he doesn’t understand me; that he doesn’t understand that I’m not angry with everyone; that everyone has been hateful to me … No, he doesn’t understand me; he can’t understand me any more. But I repeat to him in each letter: we can not follow the same path; he has his; it’s very beautiful; I have mine. His is that of Alcibiades; mine is now that of Saint Francis of Assisi … Are you familiar with Saint Francis of Assisi? aoh! wonderful! wonderful! Do you want to do something very nice for me? Send me the best life of Saint Francis that you know …

I promised him to do so; he continued:

“Yes—then we had a charming warden, aoh! quite charming! but the first six months I was terribly unhappy. There was a very nasty warden, a German, who was very cruel because he was completely lacking in imagination.” This last remark, said very fast, was irresistibly comical, and as I burst out laughing, he laughed too, repeated it, and then continued:

“He didn’t know what to imagine to make us suffer … You’ll see how lacking he was in imagination … You have to know that in prison you’re allowed to go outside only an hour a day; you then walk around a court behind one another, and it’s absolutely forbidden to speak to one another. There are guards watching you and there are terrible punishments for the one they catch.—Those who are in prison for the first time can be recognized by their not knowing how to speak without moving their lips … I had already been locked up six weeks and hadn’t yet said a word to anybody—to anybody. One evening we were walking behind one another that way during the recreation hour, and suddenly, behind me, I heard my name uttered: it was the prisoner behind me who was saying, ‘Oscar Wilde, I pity you because you must be suffering more than we.’ So I made an enormous effort not to be noticed (I thought I was going to faint), and I said without turning around, ‘No, my friend, we are all suffering equally.’—and that day I no longer had any desire to kill myself.

“We talked like that for several days. I knew his name and what he did.