I thought he was completely destitute, dependent on such casual help as friends could give him.

I have a letter from him about this time asking me for even L5[25] as if he were in extremest need.
On one of my visits to Paris after discussing his position, I could not help saying to him: "The only thing that will make you write, Oscar, is absolute, blank poverty.

That's the sharpest spur after all--necessity." "You don't know me," he replied sharply.

"I would kill myself.

I can endure to the end; but to be absolutely destitute would show me suicide as the open door." Suddenly his depressed manner changed and his whole face lighted up.
"Isn't it comic, Frank, the way the English talk of the 'open door,' while their doors are always locked, and barred, and bolted, even their church doors?
Yet it is not hypocrisy in them; they simply cannot see themselves as they are; they have no imagination." A long pause, and he went on gravely: "Suicide, Frank, is always the temptation of the unfortunate, a great temptation." "Suicide is the natural end of the world-weary," I replied; "but you enjoy life intensely.