“To depict all the misery, all the unfortunate situations, the constant dread of being found out in one’s peculiarity and of becoming impossible in society--to give an idea of all this is truly more than pen or words can compass. The very thought, so soon as it arises, of losing one’s social existence and of being rejected by everybody is more torment than can be imagined. In such a case, everything, everything would be forgotten that one had ever done in the way of good; in the consciousness of his lofty morality every normally disposed man would puff himself up, however frivolously he might really have acted in the matter of his love. I know many such normal folk whose unworthy conception of their love is indeed hard for me to understand.”--_Ibid_, p. 269. “The torturing images of betrayed love prevent my sleeping, so that I am forced, now and again, to have recourse to chloral. My dreams are only a continuation of actual life, and just as painful. How all this will end I really know not; but I suppose these root-emotions must take their own course.… The only reasonable end of the struggle is Death.”--A. MOLL, “Conträre Sexualempfindung,” 2nd edition, p. 123 (quotation from a letter). “Weary and worn, I have passed through every tempest of anguish and despair. Years of the most racking mental agony have gone over my head without killing me. Through the long night watches I have heard the unceasing hours toll. Sleep has never been thought of by me, but I have lain on my bed trying to read some book, or have knelt by my bedside and endeavoured to raise my heart and spirit in prayer for succour or forgiveness. At last, unable to hold out any longer, with mouth tight-closed and knitted brow the Charmer has deadened my senses for one or two brief hours; but only that I may wake to a stronger and clearer perception of my hopeless condition. “How the days have got on I know not. How I can have lived so long through such misery I know not. But torture like this is cruelly slow, whilst it is sure. It is the nature of youth to be long-enduring where Love is put to the test and a kind of occasional flicker--a kind of mocking semblance of hope, as like to hope as the rushing meteor is to the enduring sun--helps to support the load of misery, and so to prolong it. I am hundreds of years old in this my wretchedness of every moment. I cannot battle against Love and crush it out--never! God has implanted the necessity of the sentiment in my heart; it is scarce possible not to ask oneself why has He implanted so divine an element in my nature, which is doomed to die unsatisfied, which is destined in the end to be my very death?”--_From a manuscript left to the Author by an Urning._