They warned him at once to stop drinking and smoking and to live with the greatest abstemiousness, for they recognised in him the tertiary symptoms of that dreadful disease which the brainless prudery in England allows to decimate the flower of English manhood unchecked.
Oscar took no heed of their advice.

He had little to live for.

The pleasures of eating and drinking in good company were almost the only pleasures left to him.

Why should he deny himself the immediate enjoyment for a very vague and questionable future benefit?
He never believed in any form of asceticism or self-denial, and towards the end, feeling that life had nothing more to offer him, the pagan spirit in him refused to prolong an existence that was no longer joyous.
"I have lived," he would have said with profound truth.
Much has been made of the fact that Oscar was buried in an out-of-the-way cemetery at Bagneux under depressing circumstances.

It rained the day of the funeral, it appears, and a cold wind blew: the way was muddy and long, and only a half-a-dozen friends accompanied the coffin to its resting-place.