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should be ruined for a fault done in one's boyhood almost? I was
twenty-two at the time, and I had the double misfortune of being
well-born and poor, two unforgiveable things nowadays. Is it fair
that the folly, the sin of one's youth, if men choose to call it a
sin, should wreck a life like mine, should place me in the pillory,
should shatter all that I have worked for, all that I have built up.
Is it fair, Arthur?

LORD GORING. Life is never fair, Robert. And perhaps it is a good
thing for most of us that it is not.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Every man of ambition has to fight his century
with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God
of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all
costs one must have wealth.

LORD GORING. You underrate yourself, Robert. Believe me, without
wealth you could have succeeded just as well.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When I was old, perhaps. When I had lost my
passion for power, or could not use it. When I was tired, worn out,
disappointed. I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the
time for success. I couldn't wait.

LORD GORING. Well, you certainly have had your success while you are
still young. No one in our day has had such a brilliant success.
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the age of forty - that's good
enough for any one, I should think.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And if it is all taken away from me now? If I
lose everything over a horrible scandal? If I am hounded from public
life?

LORD GORING. Robert, how could you have sold yourself for money?

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Excitedly.] I did not sell myself for money.
I bought success at a great price. That is all.

LORD GORING. [Gravely.] Yes; you certainly paid a great price for
it. But what first made you think of doing such a thing?

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Baron Arnheim.

LORD GORING. Damned scoundrel!

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined
intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the
most intellectual men I ever met.

LORD GORING. Ah! I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more
to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a
great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I
suppose. But how did he do it? Tell me the whole thing.

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Throws himself into an armchair by the
writing-table.] One night after dinner at Lord Radley's the Baron
began talking about success in modern life as something that one
could reduce to an absolutely definite science. With that
wonderfully fascinating quiet voice of his he expounded to us the
most terrible of all philosophies, the philosophy of power, preached
to us the most marvellous of all gospels, the gospel of gold. I
think he saw the effect he had produced on me, for some days
afterwards he wrote and asked me to come and see him.

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