Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/327

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softly and sensually moulded!—which had not yet been desecrated by any sinful caresses!" … A quarrel leads to a duel, but not to a favourable outcome for the too-inflammable Prince Favourite; though his advances are not wholly declined by Hernsdorf. In yet another novel, "Saint-Sylvain", the action is of the time of Frederick the Great. One hero is Dionys, son of a Saxon country-parson, and bound by a homosexual passion to Count Floras von Saint-Sylvain, a, young nobleman, the more prominent figure in the plot. The narrative by Saint-Sylvain of his early love for young Dionys is closely analytic in passages. This story develops a situation of some dramatic strength, as other persons take part in it; including the father of Dionys, who is turned out of his parish on account of a charge of heresy—with a painful suspicion of betrayal between the friends. Next follows the imprisonment of Dionys on a accusation of. treason; and so the tale attains a climax. In another book "Kallenfels", comes the history of Julian von Kallenfels, an Antinoüs, who becomes not only the protégé of his uncle, the President Clemens, but is loved homosexually to adoration by this elderly relative on account of Julian's wonderful beauty. Unluckily, Julian has a heterosexual nature, and he falls in love with Leontine, the daughter of a village-pastor. In anguish and jealousy, Uncle Clemens separates the youthful pair. Julian looses all trace of the girl, until he discovers her too late, only to have her die in his arms.

Of "Jena and Leipzig" and of "The Two Shots" sufficient has been, said elsewhere in this study. A longer story in the Sternberg collection, the "Memoirs Of A German Gil Bias", where the lively imagination and irony have Voltairean accents. The earlier reminiscences offer several homosexual figures and episodes, particularly where the hero, an officer named Xavier von Violet, describes his life as a page at the court of a certain

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