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Wilde. Ah! how changed he was!… “If I reappeared before having writtenmy drama, the world would insist on seeing only the convict in me,” he had said to me. He had reappeared without the drama, and, as a few people had shut their doors to him, he no longer tried to return anywhere; he roamed about. Friends, again and again, had tried to save him; they used all their ingenuity, they took him to Italy … Wilde very quickly escaped; relapsed. Among those remaining faithful the longest, some had repeated to me so often that “Wilde was no longer fit to be seen”… I was somewhat ill at ease, I confess, at seeing him again in a place where so many people might be passing by.—Wilde was sitting at a table on the terrace of a café. He ordered two cocktails for G … and me … I was going to sit down facing him, that is, in such a way as to turn my back to the passers-by, but Wilde, perturbed by this gesture, which he thought was due to an absurd shame (he was not, alas! completely mistaken):
    â€œOh! sit down here, near me,” he said, pointing to a chair beside him; “I’m so alone these days!”
    Wilde was still well dressed; but his hat was no longer so glossy; his collar had the same shape, but it was no longer so clean; the sleeves of his frock-coat were slightly frayed.
    â€œWhen, in times gone by, I used to meet Verlaine, I didn’t blush for him,” he went on, with an attempt at pride. “I was rich, joyful, covered with glory, butI felt that to be seen near him did me honor, even when Verlaine was drunk …” Then, afraid of boring G …, I think, he abruptly changed his tone, tried to be witty, to joke, and became dismal. My recollection here remains abominably painful. Finally, my friend and I got up. Wilde insisted upon paying for the drinks, I was going to say good-bye to him when he took me aside and, confusedly, in a low voice, “Look,” he said, “you’ve got to know … I’m absolutely without resources …”
    A few days later, for the last time, I saw him again. I want to quote only a word of our conversation. He had told me of his difficulties, of the impossibility of continuing, of beginning a task. Sadly I reminded him of the promise he had made himself not to reappear in Paris except with a finished play:
    â€œAh!” I began, “why have you left Berneval so soon, when you were supposed to stay there for such a long time? I can’t say that I’m angry with you, but …”
    He interrupted me, put his hand on mine, looked at me with his most dismal look:
    â€œOne shouldn’t be angry,” he said to me, “with someone who has been struck. ”
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    This last interview is of 1898; I left shortly afterward to travel and never again saw Oscar Wilde who died only twoyears later. Robert Ross, his faithful friend, has just given to the public a few highly interesting documents which shed light on the poet’s last days. He appears to us there less alone, less forsaken than my account led one to suppose. The devotion of Reginald Turner in particular, who watched over him those last days, did not slacken for a moment.
    Following this publication, certain German or English papers accused me of having tried to stylize my last recollections, of taking pleasure in forcing the antithesis between the triumphant “King of Life” of the glorious days and the pitiful Sebastian Melmoth of the dark days.
    Everything I have related is simply and strictly accurate. Historical truth, insofar as one can achieve it, has always seemed to me infinitely more moving and far richer in meaning than the romantic element that might be drawn from it. The precious information of Mr. Ross completes mine and is a continuation of it, and moreover it is not he who has ever tried to oppose them to one another. His is of 1900 and mine of 1898, a period in which Wilde, little or poorly befriended,