He lighted a cigarette and went on: 'The public is so dreadful that it knows a man only by the last thing he has done. If I were to go back to Paris now, people would see in me only the convict. I do not want to show myself again before I have written a play. Till then I must be left alone and undisturbed.' And he added abruptly, 'Did I not do well to come here? My friends wanted me to go to the South to recruit, because at first I was quite worn out. But I asked them to find me, in the North of France, a very small place at the seaside, where I should see no one, where it was very cold and there was hardly ever any sun. Did I not do well to come and live at Berneval? [Outside the weather was frightful.] Here every one is most good to me--the Curé especially. I am so fond of the little church, and, would you believe it, it is called _Notre Dame de Liesse_[3]! Now, is not that charming? And now I know that I can never leave Berneval, because only this morning the Curé offered me a perpetual seat in the choir-stalls. And the Custom-house men, poor fellows, are so bored here with nothing to do, that I asked them if they had not anything to read, and now I am giving them all the elder Dumas' novels. So I must stay here, you see. And the children, oh, the children they adore me. On the day of the Queen's Jubilee I gave a grand fête and a big dinner, when I had forty children from the school, all of them, and the schoolmaster, to celebrate it. Is not that absolutely charming? You know that I admire the Queen very much. I always have her portrait with me.' And he showed me her portrait by Nicholson, pinned on the wall. I got up to look at it. A small bookshelf was close to it, and I began glancing at the books. I wanted to lead Wilde on to talk to me in a more serious vein. I sat down again, and rather timidly asked him if he had read _Souvenirs de la Maison des Morts_. He gave me no direct answer, but began:--'Russian writers are extraordinary. What makes their books so great is the pity they put into them. You know how fond I used to be of _Madame Bovary_, but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. It is sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse, and by which it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, my dear fellow, it was pity that prevented me from killing myself? During the first six months I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that I wanted to kill myself, but what kept me from doing so was looking at _the others_, and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, and feeling sorry for them. Oh, dear! what a wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it.' He was speaking in a low voice without any excitement.