"One sees that 'The Woman Covered With Jewels' is an outcome, and one more expression, of that literary movement that gave us 'Salambo,' 'Thais,' 'Aphrodite,' 'Imperial Purple,' and many more remarkable works of a school, or group of writers, who, wearied of the _jejune_, the effete, and much else, have sought solace for their literary conscience in a penman's reconquest of antiquity. Probably the old-world story of Paphnutius and Thais inspired the tragedy and Maeterlinck's plays suggested its technique. Who can know? Assuredly its tragic picture of devotion, passion, cupidity, and murder would thrill and enthrall those who could know it better than in this imperfect portrayal. 'The Woman Covered With Jewels' is worthy of the pen that wrote 'Salomé,' and 'The Sphinx.' "Yet it is lost!" PART IV THE WRITER OF FAIRY STORIES THE FAIRY STORIES A little girl who had kept her fifth birthday joyously in the garden of her father's home went on the morrow to the great and grimy city which was nearest to it. We were to visit the bazaars and buy books and toys. As we went through the great square in which the Town Hall stands the small hand in mine told me that here was something which we must stay to consider. We stood at the base of the statue which the citizens had raised in memory of a statesman's endeavour and success. She looked steadily and long at the figure of which the noble head redeemed the vulgar insignificance of costume and posture. "What did this man do, uncle?" she asked, "that he has been turned into stone?" I was dreadfully startled, for the horrid suspicion darted through my mind that my little niece had remembered my talk with her father about modern sculpture, and at five years old had already begun to pose. "Of course, it had to be stone not salt in England," she went on to say, and I was reassured; she at least was remembering Lot's wife. It was in the later spring of 1888, and when the evening post brought me fresh from the press "The Happy Prince and Other Tales," the first story told me that Oscar Wilde, of whom men, even then, had many things sinister and strange to say, had yet within him the heart of a little child. "High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince." "When I was alive and had a human heart I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness, so I lived and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but weep."