The subject then dropped, and the next reference to it was made by Mr. Justice Charles in his summing up on the last day of Oscar Wilde’s first trial (May 1) when the Jury disagreed and was unable to return a verdict. His lordship said that he did not propose to deal at any length with the incidents of the Queensberry trial, but that it must be remembered that the evidence of Wilde at that trial was given on oath and must not be lost sight of in considering that which he had given the previous day or two in that Court. A very large portion of the evidence of Wilde at the Queensberry trial was devoted to what Sir Edward Clarke had called “the literary part of the case,” and it had been attempted to show by cross-examination that Wilde was a man of most unprincipled character with regard to the relation of men to boys. In regard to a magazine called _The Chameleon_, published in the autumn of 1894, it was alleged that Wilde had given the sanction of his name to the most abominable doctrines, but the only connection proved between that magazine and the defendant was that it was prefaced by two or three pages of aphorisms by the accused, of which it was sufficient to say that some were amusing, some cynical, some, if his lordship might be allowed to criticize, silly; but wicked, no.
The learned Counsel who represented Lord Queensberry, the Judge continued, had called attention to a story, a filthy narrative of a most disgusting character, called “The Priest and the Acolyte,” of which the author, who signed himself “X,” should be thoroughly ashamed. With that story Wilde had had nothing whatever to do, and to impute to him any thing in it was quite absurd. To judge him by another man’s works which he had never seen would be highly unjust.
In the second trial of Oscar Wilde, which was heard before Mr. Justice Willis on the following May 22 to 25, no mention was made of _The Chameleon_ or of “The Priest and the Acolyte.”
What is stated above ought to be sufficient, once and for all, to dissociate the name of the author of “Salomé” and “Lady Windermere’s Fan” from the story reprinted in the following pages.
“Pray, father, give me thy blessing, for I have sinned.”
The priest started; he was tired in mind and body; his soul was sad and his heart heavy as he sat in the terrible solitude of the confessional ever listening to the same dull round of oft-repeated sins. He was weary of the conventional tones and matter-of-fact expressions. Would the world always be the same? For nearly twenty centuries the Christian priests had sat in the confessional and listened to the same old tale. The world seemed to him no better; always the same, the same. The young priest sighed to himself, and for a moment almost wished people would be worse. Why could they not escape from these old wearily-made paths and be a little original in their vices, if sin they must? But the voice he now listened to aroused him from his reverie. It was so soft and gentle, so diffident and shy.