Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/625

 intellectual, amiable and dignified fellow, named Herman von Rotenhan; of a distinguished family (to-day well-represented) a youth who afterwards became a noted provincial statesman. Von Rotenhan lodged in the same house with Platen, in fact in the next room. Rotenhan came in November. Platen saw him standing in the passage, and fell in love with him at sight. They immediately exchanged calls. Platen discovered that Rotenhan was quite all that his attractive exterior promised—a gentleman, wholly sincere, frank, high-minded, sociable and romantic withal. So began their friendship, enthusiastically. Platen was not without immediate uneasiness, as he remarked the danger-signal of sexual feeling rising, to disturb his merely idealizing sentiment for Herman. And, just as before, so now he juggles with the evidence. On November 6th, he exclaims that he "hates love, and all its frightful caverns" (!). He has resolved that somehow he does not care "even to take Rotenhan's hand, nor to embrace him." But this state of "sinesexuality," soon passed, as we might well expect. For Rotenhan himself was decidedly ardent in sexual tendencies; was not in any ethical worriments; was a cheerful young sensualist of refined nature. He showed himself more and more inclined to be—demonstrative. Poor Platen became panicky. What ought he to do? To fly the affectionate young Herman? "… Can I behave otherwise than I do?", he writes … "Would I find rest if I let myself go back to the road I began to travel upon?" He means, of course, the "road" with Schmidtlein. "Should I not do what I feel is right? I can truly do my part toward establishing a spiritual and chaste bond with Rotenhan; but certainly that does not seem to lie ahead. One thing is certain, that we are neither of us unsensual: though he likely has not yet experienced to what precipices such a situation leads one. Alas, I have found that out … I must ward myself from any moment of self-forgetting." Platen tried this heroic attitude the more conscientiously, if only