Or take the following:
"Captain F. N. of the O— Regiment,—now at G—, after a visit to the Franciscan Church last Sunday returned to his lodgings in—Strasse, and after sitting at his writing-desk, put a revolver to his breast and was found by his orderly, lying by the desk, dead, some hours, later … A letter to a fellow-officer declared his intention of making away with himself. The suicide was evidently quite clear-minded. Captain N— was a young man, of regular habits, and retiring in manner. He was often called the "woman-hater" in view of his avoidance of "gay" society in G—. His health was good; his family affairs and money-matters were entirely in order. There is, in short, no accounting for his act. The friend to whom the letter mentioned was delivered declines to give information as to its contents."
In a garrison-town in Italy, two or three winters ago, occurred the suicide of a high officer of the Italian Service; an incident which awakened regret and surprise in Italian army-circles, owing to the high character and distinction of the deceased. He had fine social qualities; there was a want of motive to explain his act. V— had been in his usual spirits, had mixed freely with his friends on the preceding days of the same week, and was just promoted. He blew out his brains in his room, one afternoon, leaving on the table a four-line letter saying—"The disease which afflicts me prevents my dragging out this life of mine any longer. Please notify my brother, with due caution." No "disease" existed. The fact that the dead man had been homosexual, and the victim of a melancholy long-concealed from human scrutiny, was afterwards known. He had given up existence in a fit of neurasthenic despair.
Before the close of the thirties, in the nineteenth century, occurred in Vienna, a chain of episodes in
— 198 —
