Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/613

 already "experienced." Clearly what with his "cruel portent" and many other sub-currents of emotion, he had become by no means so "idealistic," as he had kept on writing himself down to be. If favoured in any similar affairs in the future, he would not be able to hold himself in firm physical check. He knew it now. In any case, he was soon to find out just the very thing that he so dreaded, or wanted to think that he dreaded, as the "goal" of such a love.

A few months later, in the Spring of 1818, after again visiting Ansbach and returning to Munich to regulate his money-affairs and his military discharge for a term of years at least, he matriculated at Würzburg University. The writer of these pages came upon his signature, the other day, in turning over the old University Register—a clear, bold writing, however disturbed and anxious as to the future may have been the young newcomer that penned it on that now yellowed page.

At Würzburg, where Platen entered himself as a student on April 5, 1818, he found several of his older friends glad to see him, and to bid him godspeed in his next career as a student. Gruber and Massenbach were among these. Platen fairly plunged into incessant belles-lettres reading, language-study, lectures in special or regular courses in philosophy, and in other matters. Immense was his eagerness and his satisfaction of mind at being at last free to do so, and able to concentrate his mind on such work. But (the reader already will have foreseen this) he soon found that he was not happy. Mere intellectuality cannot satisfy most healthful young Uranians. Platen was vaguely longing, restless, craving, for—what? Of course, for some new sentimental predicament, for the turning-round of 'the windmill' aforesaid, whither was coming all too much grist. A new love seemed likely to center on a handsome young classmate named