In the three years since I had seen him--for I can hardly count a short meeting in Florence the year before--Wilde had certainly changed. One felt that there was less tenderness in his look, that there was something harsh in his laughter and a madness in his joy. He seemed, at the same time, to be more sure of pleasing and less ambitious to succeed therein. He had grown reckless, hardened, and conceited. Strangely enough, he no longer spoke in fables, and during several days that I tarried there I was not once able to draw the shortest tale from him. My first impression was one of astonishment at finding him in Algeria. 'Oh,' he said to me, 'just now I am fleeing from art. I want only to adore the sun. Have you ever noticed how the sun detests thought? The sun always causes thought to withdraw itself and take refuge in the shade. Thought dwelt in Egypt originally, but the sun conquered Egypt; then it lived for a long time in Greece, and the sun conquered Greece, then in Italy, and then in France. Nowadays all thought is driven back as far as Norway and Russia, places where the sun never goes. The sun is jealous of art.' To adore the sun, ah! that was--for him--to adore life. Wilde's lyrical adoration was fast becoming a frenzied madness. A fatality led him on; he could not and would not withdraw himself from it. He seemed to devote all his zeal and all his worth to over-rating his destiny, and over-reaching himself. '_My_ special duty,' he used to say, 'is to plunge madly into amusement.' He used to make a point of searching for pleasure as one faces an appointed duty. Nietzsche surprised me less, on a later occasion, because I had heard Wilde say, 'No, not happiness! Certainly not happiness! Pleasure. One must always set one's heart upon the most tragic.' He would walk about the streets of Algiers preceded, escorted, and followed by an extraordinary mob of young ruffians. He talked to them all, regarded them all with equal delight, and threw them money recklessly. 'I hope to have thoroughly demoralized this town,' he told me. I thought of Flaubert's saying when he was asked what kind of reputation he most desired--'that of being a demoralizer,' he replied. In the face of all this I was filled with astonishment, admiration, and alarm. I knew of his shaky position, the enmities he had created, and the attacks which were being made upon him, and I knew what dark unrest lay hidden beneath his outward pretence of pleasure.