Cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 10 C. pour chaque cigarette.

Pas de cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 20 C. pour chaque
cigarette.

This is the system at all good hotels. If Reggie comes, of course he
will pay a little more: I cannot forget that he gave me a dressing-case.
Sphinxes pay a hundred per cent more than any one else--they always did
in Ancient Egypt.

But seriously, Robbie, if people stayed with me, of course they would pay
their _pension_ at the hotel. They would have to: except architects. A
modern architect, like modern architecture, doesn't pay. But then I know
only one architect and you are hiding him somewhere from me. I believe
that he is as extinct as the dado, of which now only fossil remains are
found, chiefly in the vicinity of Brompton, where they are sometimes
discovered by workmen excavating. They are usually embedded in the old
Lincrusta Walton strata, and are rare consequently.

I visited M. le Cure {4} to-day. He has a charming house and a _jardin
potager_. He showed me over the church. To-morrow I sit in the choir by
his special invitation. He showed me all his vestments. To-morrow he
really will be charming in red. He knows I am a heretic, and believes
Pusey is still alive. He says that God will convert England on account
of England's kindness to _les pretres exiles_ at the time of the
Revolution. It is to be the reward of that sea-lashed island.

Stained glass windows are wanted in the church; he has only six; fourteen
more are needed. He gets them at 300 francs--12 pounds--a window in
Paris. I was nearly offering half a dozen, but remembered you, and so
only gave him something _pour les pauvres_. You had a narrow escape,
Robbie. You should be thankful.

I hope the 40 pounds is on its way, and that the 60 pounds will follow. I
am going to hire a boat. It will save walking and so be an economy in
the end. Dear Robbie, I must start well. If the life of St. Francis of
Assissi awaits me I shall not be angry. Worse things might happen.

Yours,

OSCAR.

--_Letter to Robert Ross_.

A VISIT TO THE POPE

c/o COOK & SON, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME,

April 16th, 1900.

My dear Robbie,--I simply cannot write. It is too horrid, not of me, but
to me. It is a mode of paralysis--a _cacoethes tacendi_--the one form
that malady takes in me.

Well, all passed over very successfully. Palermo, where we stayed eight
days, was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world--it
dreams away its life in the _concha d'oro_, the exquisite valley that
lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were so
entirely perfect that I became quite a Pre-Raphaelite, and loathed the
ordinary impressionists whose muddly souls and blurred intelligences
would have rendered, but by mud and blur, those "golden lamps hung in a
green night" that filled me with such joy. The elaborate and exquisite
detail of the true Pre-Raphaelite is the compensation they offer us for
the absence of motion; literature and motion being the only arts that are
not immobile.