Chapter 11 Part 1

For years Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book, or perhaps

it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.

He procured from Paris no less than nine large paper copies of the first edition and had

them bound in different colors so that they might suit his various moods and the changing

fancies of a nature over which he seemed at times to have almost entirely lost control.

The hero, the wonderful young Parisian in whom the romantic and the scientific temperaments

were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.

And indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written

before he had lifted.

In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero.

He never knew, never indeed had any cause to know, that somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors

and polished metal surfaces and still water, which came upon the young Parisian so early

in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a bow that had once apparently

been so remarkable.

It was with an almost cruel joy, and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every

pleasure, cruelty has its place, that he used to read the latter part of the book, with

its really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who

had himself lost what in others and the world he had most dearly valued.

For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated, basil hallward, and many others besides him

seemed never to leave him.

Even those who had heard the most evil things against him, and from time to time strange

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