"An irresistible yearning seized me.
"I got up and embraced the beautiful cold body and kissed the cold
lips. A deep shudder fell upon me and I fled, and later in a dream,
it seemed to me, as if the goddess stood beside my bed, threatening
me with up-raised arm.
"I was sent to school early and soon reached the gymnasium. I
passionately grasped at everything which promised to make the world
of antiquity accessible to me. Soon I was more familiar with the gods
of Greece than with the religion of Jesus. I was with Paris when he
gave the fateful apple to Venus, I saw Troy burn, and followed
Ulysses on his wanderings. The prototypes of all that is beautiful
sank deep into my soul, and consequently at the time when other boys
are coarse and obscene, I displayed an insurmountable aversion to
everything base, vulgar, unbeautiful.
"To me, the maturing youth, love for women seemed something
especially base and unbeautiful, for it showed itself to me first in
all its commonness. I avoided all contact with the fair sex; in
short, I was supersensual to madness.
"When I was about fourteen my mother had a charming chamber-maid,
young, attractive, with a figure just budding into womanhood. I was
sitting one day studying my Tacitus and growing enthusiastic over the
virtues of the ancient Teutons, while she was sweeping my room.
Suddenly she stopped, bent down over me, in the meantime holding fast
to the broom, and a pair of fresh, full, adorable lips touched mine.
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