CHAPTER VI.
From 1884 on I met Oscar Wilde continually, now at the theatre, now in some society drawing room; most often, I think, at Mrs.Jeune's (afterwards Lady St.Helier).

His appearance was not in his favour; there was something oily and fat about him that repelled me.

Naturally being British-born and young I tried to give my repugnance a moral foundation; fleshly indulgence and laziness, I said to myself, were written all over him.

The snatches of his monologues which I caught from time to time seemed to me to consist chiefly of epigrams almost mechanically constructed of proverbs and familiar sayings turned upside down.

Two of Balzac's characters, it will be remembered, practised this form of humour.