Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/584

 among the royal pages of honour, at the Court of King Maximilian of Bavaria. There, during about four years of service and study, his naturally quick mind advanced materially, even under the "fashionable" tutelage of the "Pagery" School. He decided to enter the army as a profession, though with no real vocation for it. From 1814 till 1818 he was not only in a regular routine of home-service in Munich, but made the march with several other Bavarian regiments into France, to join the Allies, against Napoleon. The end of the Napoleonic campaign coming before Platen's division could take part in the action, he returned to Munich without a "baptism of fire." To the period following, his military life in Munich, we shall find that some of the most characteristic of the revelations of the earlier part of his Diary belong; although not of the impressive sorts which are met in the next stage of his restive existence—his student-life at Würzburg and Erlangen Universities. For, sensibly deciding that he was not born for soldiering, and having ideas of a diplomatic life. Platen turned from the army, to pursue philosophy, literature, political history and other matters, first at Würzburg University, then at Erlangen. He was a most close and. successful student. It was here, at these Universities that prolonged and notable episodes of his maturer, innermost, sentimental life are met. These quite surpass in emotional definiteness two or three affairs of a homosexual sort in his soldier-days. They include his relations to a fellow-student at Würzburg named Eduard Schmidtlein ("Adrastus"); to another student—Herman von Rotenhan; to Otto von Bulow; to the young law-student, Hoffman(?) who is named "Cardenio" in the Journal; to Justus Liebig; and to Karl Theodore German. They were all students with him, now at one time, now another, during his college-life; and successively they were central figures of the strange and affecting soul dramas that Platen has written out for us, in the Journal and in his verse.