VIII. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!

[epigrammatical]

[AUDIO, public. The morning after the event ends and Tu Vishan starts moving again.]

I am not alone, I gather, in detecting a change in the air here. It is rather like waking on the very first day of the Season, with all the possibility that lies ahead—or waking the morning after the last day, with the happy knowledge that one need not be at home to anyone that day. We have, I suppose, escaped the fate of Des Esseintes's tortoise.

---

[AUDIO, private to Dorian Gray.]

I have finished Mr Findley's novel, Dorian. A most marvellous book; quite gorgeous and affecting.

But I must ask you, dear boy—is what he writes about Oscar true?

[He's already guessed that it is. This is less a real question than the confirmation of a sense of creeping dread.]

Comments

[heartofgraces]

...Des Esseintes?

[Asbel has no idea what you're talking about but you sound smart!]

[epigrammatical]

[Ah, a new voice, and one who was undoubtedly not there for Lord Henry's original disquisition on the subject.]

He is the hero of a charming novel called Á Rebours—a man of noble birth who sequesters himself from society to pursue all possible aesthetic experience.

whoops yes audio

[heartofgraces]

Wouldn't that get lonely? If he'd cut himself out, he'd never get to discover anything about people that surprised him.

[Asbellogic.jpg. He's curious, but there's not a lot about this philosophy that makes much sense to him.]

audio

[epigrammatical]

Ah, but he had decided that he'd had quite enough of human society, you see. There was no more charm in the company of his fellow-man, only revulsion.