Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/292

 of the historian to Bonstetten were published (by Cotta, Stuttgart) under the editing of Brun. Another collection, of miscellaneous sort, was issued by Orel in Zürich, edited by Füssli. The Bonstetten correspondence mentioned ("Briefe Eines Jungen Gelehrten an Seinen Freund") stirred up much comment, when in print. They mumber about one hundred and fifty, often being long. Nearly every page, each paragraph, speaks the heart of an Uranian lover before his beloved. In citing them one hardly knows where to begin. A few passages only are the following:

"Without you I can never be happy; with you all my misfortunes find their alleviation … You letters are my eye-salve, since what heals my heart is my body's health … You love me as I love you … I shall love you till my death … Good God! How far I am from you, my own Bonstetten! Among such ordinary mortals! And yet, my God! Bonstetten is mine!… Remember ever, my Bonstetten that you are my friend. No matter where I may live, still my greatest bliss is only you. Bethink you, too, that every idea, every principle of wisdom I have learned and possess, my whole individuality, belong to you. Yes, dispose of my person as you choose … My dearest of all! I find our friendship indeed extraordinary, because no other feeling has any comparison with it. I love you even more than even when in Habsburg. All that I have would I give if at this moment I could embrace you! I feel what the unity of our two hearts would fain speak out … Yes, my B—, I am yours and you are mine. I love you as no other man in this world of ours to-day can love another. I love other men just in the measure that they are like you. I hold it as the priceless bliss of life that in the twenty-first year of my age, by a chance, I found you out, among a group of forty-two other mortals; you who have been my brother throughout the many changes of my life, and who will be my companion until my death and whose heart is worthy to be the object of the whole overflowing stream of my friendship; you, the only single human being, among all others, who is noble enough and of a soul sensitive enough to love me as I love him!" …

"The only thing that gives me anxiety is my fear that my friendship for you is not warm enough! My dearest, my friend! My heart is oppressed when I think of that four-days-long dream from the Gods that has been ours!… I count the hours and the