Page:Saltus - Oscar Wilde, an idler's impression.djvu/24

 ever said of anyone was that he was a tedious person, and the only time he ever rebuked anybody was at the conclusion of one of those after-dinner stories which some host or other interrupted by rising and saying: “Shall we continue the conversation in the drawing-room?”

But I am in error. That was not his only rebuke. On one occasion I drove with him to Tite street. An hour previous he had executed a variation on the “Si j'étais roi.” “If I were king,” he had sung, "I would sit in a great hall and paint on green ivory and when my ministers came and told me that the people were starving, I would continue to paint on green ivory and say: ‘Let them starve.’ ”

The aria was rendered in the rooms of Francis Hope, a young man who later married and divorced May Yohe, but who at the time showed an absurd interest in stocks. Someone else entered and Hope asked what was new in the City. “Money is very tight,” came the reply. “Ah, yes,”