Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/217

 army-life, based almost wholly on uranistic facts. How much so was known to few persons outside of a trio directly involved. Among the Magyar Imperial Life-Guards in Vienna, was a certain young Count U—, a member of an excellent family as well as of an aristocratic circle. Count U— was of a physical beauty which made him the object of feminine admiration in half the drawingrooms of Vienna. Complaisant proposals were lavished on this Apollo of one of the most picturesque regiments in Europe. He was a Don Juan as to the women. Nevertheless, Count U— was a Dionian-Uranian. He maintained a sexual relation with a young brother-officer in Budapest, a famous swordsman and rider, of notable attractiveness. Between the two young men came a difference. The fidus Achates of Count U— was a declared woman-hater, entirely homosexual. But in course of time, Count H—, apparently reverting to the normal, fell in love with a young and beautiful girl. It became a question of his marriage. The Count offered his hand and name. Fraulein X— accepted him. Unhappily one obstacle to the marriage existed. The young lady was of Jewish stock, the daughter of a wealthy financier. At that time the local prejudice against such marriages, on the part of aristocratic Vienna, was more sharp than it is to-day. The engagement might however have been acceptable to the U— family, but for a direct intervention, made by the friend of Count U—. He had been willing to tolerate Count U—'s passing flames, but the idea of the marriage was unendurable. Whatever he could do to strengthen the opposition of the family of Count U— he did. But he maneuvered this so adroitly that Count U— had no idea of any such intrigue. The jealous soldier played his rôle with the finesse of an actor. He could not succeed in bringing the parents of Count U— to a definite refusal to receive the young lady into their intimacy, should the marriage occur, until about a week prior to its date. Some of the members of the U— family had