For some reason or other, most probably out of tawdry vanity, Lorrain folded his arms theatrically and replied:
"I regret I cannot say as much: I can no longer be one of your friends, M. Wilde."
The insult was stupid, brutal; yet everyone was on tiptoe to see how Oscar would answer it.
"How true that is," he said quietly, as quickly as if he had expected the traitor-thrust, "how true and how sad! At a certain time in life all of us who have done anything like you and me, Lorrain, must realise that we no longer have any friends in this world; but only lovers." (Plus d'amis, seulement des amants.)
A smile of approval lighted up every face.
"Well said, well said," was the general exclamation. His humour was almost invariably generous, kind.
One day in a Paris studio the conversation turned on the character of Marat: one Frenchman would have it that he was a fiend, another saw in him the incarnation of the revolution, a third insisted that he was merely the gamin of the Paris streets grown up. Suddenly one turned to Oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his opinion: he took the ball at once, gravely.
"Ce malheureux! Il n'avait pas de veine—pour une fois qu'il a pris un bain...." (Poor devil, he was unlucky! To come to such grief for once taking a bath.)
For a little while Oscar was interested in the Dreyfus case, and especially in the Commandant Esterhazy, who played such a prominent part in it with the infamous bordereau which brought about the conviction of Dreyfus. Most Frenchmen now know that the bordereau was a forgery and without any real value.