Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/555

 was intelligently convinced, and they skilfully effected the breaking of their engagement—on a pretext from her side.

Historic cases of these 'escapes' are to he met. One of them involved the unlucky Ludwig II of Bavaria. We have noted such a situation as a tragedy, when speaking of the ruptured betrothal of Lenau, the distinguished poet.

Nevertheless, we continually find the homosexual entering on his engagement, after positive medical advice toward such a step.—as his "cure." But anon—perhaps at once—he finds his error. His disillusionment is pitiable. Such a well-meaning but evil counsellor is depicted in the interview with a medical specialist, included in a little psychiatric romance already cited in these pages—"Imre a Memorandum:

… "This doctor wrote of my kind as simply—diseased. "Curable", absolutely "curable"; so long as the mind was man-like in all else, and the body firm and normal. Certainly that was my case! Would! not therefore do well to take that one step which was stated to be most wise and helpful toward correcting as perturbed a relation to ordinary life as mine had become? That step was—to marry. To marry immediately."

"The physician who had written that book happened to be in England at the time. I had never thought it possible that I could feel courage to go to any man .. save to that one vague sympathizer, my dream-friend, he who some day would understand all!… and confess myself; lay bare my mysterious nature. But if it were a mere disease, oh, that made a difference! So I visited the distinguished specialist at once. He helped me urbanely through my embarrassing story of my 'malady' … "Oh, there was nothing extraordinary, not at all extraordinary in it, from the beginning to the end," the doctor assured me, smiling—in fact, it was "exceedingly common … All confidential specialists in nervous diseases know of hundreds of just such cases; nay, of much worse ones; and treat and cure them … A morbid state of certain sexual-sensory nerve-centers" … and so on, in his glibly professional diagnosis."