Oscar Wilde renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform.
Melmoth the Wanderer Madrid. Melmoth reappears and he and Isidora elope by night; he leads her to a remote chapel where they are married by an undead hermit. Isidora's father encounters a stranger at an inn who tells him The Tale of Guzman's Family. Guzman is a wealthy Spanish merchant whose sister marries a poor German musician, Walberg. Guzman decides to make Walberg's family his heirs, but his will leaves everything to the church, and the family sinks into poverty; almost insane, Walberg decides to end their poverty by killing them all—but before he does so, news arrives that the true will has