Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/333

 years) all over the fashionable circus-going world, as "Miss Corinna" ("Mademoiselle Corinne") one of the most artistic and beautiful of female equestrians—engaged right and left by the Barnums and Wolffs and Busches of her time. As an equestrienne, his adorers were numberless; but the secret of his virility was rarely disclosed. During the Italian war of 1859, when in travesty as a woman, and not suspected to be other than an attractive vivandière, Vacano conceived a passion for a young officer, and this relationship was so much more elevating than certain of his other béguins that ho decided to be a man for the future. But new escapades and changes, now to one sex now to other, followed. He passed months in a convent as a nun, giving himself seriously to religious life—for the time. His literary career was brilliant as brief; but his best books—"Die Gottosmorder" and "Die Heiligen"—and some shorter stories have not only unflagging verve but a superiour philosophic suggestiveness, and deserve to be remembered. With all Vacano's levity, cynism, capriciousness, in much he was a nature of fine ethical quality; generous, affectionate, a devoted son to his mother (whom he adored) charging himself with the care of the children of a relative when he was in his least prosperous days; and always a severe critic of himself. He craved affection and friendship with the accent of femininity which is part of the uranian ego. He died June 19, 1892, in Karlsruhe, at fifty-one; died not unwillingly. In one of his letters to Koseggor, not long before his death, he sounded a note that many uranians can echo … "Well—I shall close here to-day my little letter of chatter to you. My table is full of sheets, my portfolio looks just as if had the dropsy, so many unanswered letters are yet stuffed into it—I must clear things away, and I am so tired to death that no human words can express it—yearn so for rest! I feel just as if I were ending a long pilgrimage to some holy resort—but where one finds the church-doors all fast-shut!