Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/607

 for any sympathetic intimacy whatever between them. From that moment, Platen's passion sunk to dullness. In a few weeks it was wholly extinguished. A few later meetings of a tame sort, friendly but not alterative at all, completed Platen's "cure" of the Knight of Malta! Platen was too honest with himself to struggle along against the real for the sake of the ideal. But he suffered much in being disillusioned. (One dolesome and long entry, that of April 9, 1816, is worth reading.) There were spasmodic fits of idealistics for Hornstein. We find Platen once kissing the sofa-pillow on which his shattered idol's "dear head" had rested. But in an entry of April 30, he says … "Almost my last spark of inclination for a man not worth it is now extinguished." Then, in a sort of pathetic healing-quest we find him harking back to Brandenstein (see the entries between April and June, of the year named) and there is a deal about his renewed devotion to only the beautiful "Federigo." In August 1816, occurred the odd little episode of his vain attempt to get a silhouette portrait of Brandenstein, by a thoroughly feminine ruse. But (this is significant) he now fairly had learned what great differences may exist between one's ideal of a man and the real individual. He dreads being "disillusioned" again. He applies that dread to "Federigo." ".. O, that he may be the sort of man that I suppose!" Platen however never came to that knowledge. Possibly it was lucky for him. His perplexities darkened: "Father in Heaven, teach me where real happiness is I Teach me the true wisdom of life——or let me meet my end!"

The reader must not think of Platen as doing nothing but a little garrison-duty, mooning over love-affairs, writing a voluminous Journal, and inditing love-verses, during all this unhappy Munich period. On the contrary, he was assiduously studying languages, the best literatures, aesthetics; making with remarkable zeal his preparation for some sort of an intellectual life, presently to be