Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/594

, and contains sundry more or less salient errors of judgement or statement.

On turning over the Diary we find that—as might be expected—the first entries that we seek refer to shadowy, idealistic loves; much more fanciful than grounded in personalities. Platen mentions, years later (in October 1817, when he was passing a summer at Schliersee) that a friend in the Pagery at Munich, young Xylander, "was the first object" of his homosexual emotions. But no such entries as to Xylander, occur in the proper date. Instead we find that when Platen was sixteen years old, and yet a- page, he saw at a court-ball the young Count Mercy d'Argenteau, a relative of the French ambassador to Bavaria. The beauty and grace of this youth made a deep impression on Platen—deep, for it never wore away wholly. He always looked back to it with a throb of heart—the more feelingly because he felt, even to his latest years, that no physical sexualism had any share in it. Indeed Platen was spell-bound by this young d'Argenteau, merely by seeing him a few times; for he he never was presented to the young Frenchman and only two or three words—those by accident and of no importance whatever—passed between the two. But long entries in his Journal testify to his emotion. He writes later: "I wished for love: till now I had felt only a longing for friendship … How happy I am when near him, how my heart rises! A gentle excitement fills all my soul. Seeing him again has the same effect upon me as if out of his features, at the first glance, a new life name to my heart … I dreamed of him to-night—a fair and kindly dream, fair and kind as himself … Even if I never see him again, O, my God! let not this love be extinguished in me! It is the love for all that is Beautiful, True and Perfect … I will rejoice when I see him, and be sorrowful when my eye finds him not. I will think and dream and speak of him.