Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/633

 had never tried to cultivate that fair-faced, slender young Erlangen "student-jurist." But alack! Platen says truly of himself, as of all men and women—"I must love where I must!" So mounted a desire that blazed and smouldered alternately, week in and week out.

Before Platen had achieved "Cardenio's" acquaintance, came the end of the University-term. "Cardenio" went away. Platen, after many hesitations, decided on a most foolish step. He had planned to pass several months studying in Vienna. This mood was over. He determined instead to go and "to live alone," for those months, in the cold, dull little town of Altdorf (near Nürnberg) and there to study Greek, Persian, and so on. He went to Altdorf. The plan was a perfect failure. He was haunted by "Cardenio"; he was not well; he could not endure his miserable lodgings in such a primitive place in the winter. He realized what a folly he had undertaken, as soon as he entered on it. Worse still, inasmuch as he was not at all sure whether "Cardenio" purposed to return to Erlangen, to continue his studies, Platen was not certain for a moment whether, even if he should now give up this Altdorf exile and go back to the University, he would find there (when the terms were to be resumed) the still "unknown god" of his heart.

After obstinate weeks of solitary brooding and half-study, under winter-conditions, Platen surrendered. He returned to Erlangen. "Cardenio," the real cause of all his plight and disquiet, turned out to be there once more, for a final term. But all went amiss as to any intimacy with "Cardenio;" who now—as before—neither cared for Platen's acquaintance nor liking. They became nominally friends, but only on the surfaces of life. Platen grew fairly hysterical with love and a fierce sexual longing. In the Diary, the first of the two "Epistles to Cardenio" in verse (published in the Poems) show what a tense, agonizing, hopeless love it was:—