The "smart set" in London has almost as keen a love of scandal as a cathedral town.
About this time one heard of a dinner which Oscar Wilde had given at a restaurant in Soho, which was said to have degenerated into a sort of Roman orgy.

I was told of a man who tried to get money by blackmailing him in his own house.

I shrugged my shoulders at all these scandals, and asked the talebearers what had been said about Shakespeare to make him rave as he raved again and again against "back-wounding calumny"; and when they persisted in their malicious stories I could do nothing but show disbelief.

Though I saw but little of Oscar during the first year or so of his intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, one scene from this time filled me with suspicion and an undefined dread.
I was in a corner of the Cafe Royal one night downstairs, playing chess, and, while waiting for my opponent to move, I went out just to stretch my legs.

When I returned I found Oscar throned in the very corner, between two youths.