Those who would know Oscar Wilde as he really was will read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow selfishness with such venom, that he discovers his own colossal egotism and essential hardness of heart.

"Love," we are told, "suffereth long and is kind ...

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things"-- that sweet, generous, all-forgiving tenderness of love was not in the pagan, Oscar Wilde, and therefore even his deepest passion never won to complete reconciliation and ultimate redemption.
In this same talk with M.Gide, Oscar is reported to have said that he had known beforehand that a catastrophe was unavoidable; "there was but one end possible....

That state of things could not last; there had to be some end to it." This view I believe is Gide's and not Oscar's.

In any case I am sure that my description of him before the trials as full of insolent self-assurance is the truer truth.