Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/326

 Esthonia, far up to the North-East, on the Baltic; and passed his days in many German and other cities, especially at St. Petersburg, Dorpat, Mannheim, Weimar and Dresden. His life was wandering; full of the nervous restlessness of so many of his type. He lost this trait with riper years. He married when about fifty—a marriage of convenience, without obvious sexual impulse. He died in 1868, on his estate at Granzow, not far from Stralsund. To his natural interest in Pommern, may be attributed that element of personal or local colour in some of his tales, as we have seen.

Von Sternberg's stories, are a curious study. They have not been republished in German within many years. What English translations of them ever appeared (the present writer has not been able to find any) seem to have become lost. The most characteristic stories would not be admissable in England, though not a phrase that is not in good literary taste appears in their authour's pages. Their mixture of fanciful and real personages individualizes them. Thus in "Molière" we discover, as the mainspring of action, the passion which the great French actor and dramatist (when past middle life) felt for a beautiful youth in his theater-company, named Baron. Molière so loves young Baron that he considers renouncing his career; retiring to some lonely, rural spot with Baron, as his greatest happiness. But a tragedy develops, in which Sternberg also utilizes the rash marriage which Molière made, when fifty years old; young Baron becoming the betrayer of his patron's bed. In "Galathée", Sternberg gives us the reminiscences of an extremely sensual love by an old and eccentric ээrouéээ, Prince Favourite, for a marvellously beautiful boy, the Chevalier Hernsdorf … "I burned for him, I swore that I would possess him, cost what it might. Ah, what delight, could I but see those dark eyes bent on mine with love!—to banquet on those fresh lips and cheeks—so