'The successor of the harsh Governor was a very charming man--oh! remarkably so--and most considerate to me. You cannot imagine how much good it did me in prison that _Salomé_[6] was being played in Paris just at that time. In prison, it had been entirely forgotten that I was a literary person, but when they saw that my play was a success in Paris, they said to one another, "Well, but that is strange; he has talent, then." And from that moment they let me have all the books I wanted to read[7]. I thought, at first, that what would please me most would be Greek literature, so I asked for Sophocles, but I could not get a relish for it. Then I thought of the Fathers of the Church, but I found them equally uninteresting. And suddenly I thought of Dante. Oh! Dante. I read Dante every day, in Italian, and all through, but neither the _Purgatorio_ nor the _Paradiso_ seemed written for me. It was his _Inferno_ above all that I read; how could I help liking it? Cannot you guess? Hell, we were in it--Hell, that was prison!'[8] That same evening he told me a clever story about Judas, and of his proposed drama on Pharaoh. Next day he took me to a charming little house[9], about two hundred yards from the hotel, which he had rented and was beginning to furnish. It was there that he wanted to write his plays--his _Pharoah_ first, and then one called _Ahab and Jezebel_ (he pronounced it 'Isabelle'), which he related to me admirably. The carriage which was to take me away was waiting, and Wilde got into it to accompany me part of the way. He began talking to me again about my book, and praised it, though with some slight reserve, I thought. At last the carriage stopped; he bade me good-bye, and was just going to get out, when he suddenly said, 'Listen, my dear friend, you must promise me one thing. Your _Nourritures Terrestres_ is good, very good, but promise me you will never write a capital "I" again.' And as I seemed scarcely to understand what he meant, he finished up by saying, 'In Art, you see, there is no first person.' [1] A literary friend who, a few years later, in collaboration, with another, translated _Dorian Gray_ into French. [2] 'No more beautiful life has any man lived, no more beautiful life could any man live than Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I knew him in prison. He wore upon his face an eternal smile; sunshine was on his face, sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. People say he was not sincere: he was the very soul of sincerity when I knew him. If he did not continue that life after he left prison, then the forces of evil must have been too strong for him. But he tried, he honestly tried, and in prison he succeeded.'--_From a Letter written to the Translator_. [3] An archaic French word from the Latin _laetitia_.