-mistress
gazing at a beautiful landscape, I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness
and burst out crying. The head-mistress inquired what was the matter, and
throwing myself in her arms I sobbed: 'I love her, and I shall die if she
leaves off loving me!' She smiled, and the smile went through my heart. I
saw at once how silly I was, and what a wrong road my companion was on.
From that day I could no longer endure my 'flame.' The separation was
absolute; I courageously bore bites and insults, even scratches on my
face, followed by long complaints and complete prostration. I thought it
would be mean to accuse her, but I invented a pretext for having the
number of my bed changed. This was because she would dress quietly and
come to pass hours by my bed, resting her head on the pillow. She said she
wished to smell the perfume of my health and freshness. This continual
turbulent desire had now nauseated me, and I wished to avoid it
altogether. Later I heard that she had formed a relationship which was not
blessed by any sacred rite."

Notwithstanding the Platonic character of the correspondences, Obici and
Marchesini remark, there is really a substratum of emotional sexuality
beneath it, and it is this which finds its expression in the indecorous
conversations already referred to. The "flame" is a _love-fiction, a play
of sexual love_. This characteristic comes out in the frequently romantic
names, of men and women, invented to sign the letters.

Even in the letters themselves, however, the element of sexual
impressionability may be traced. "On Friday we went to a service at San
B.," writes one who was in an institution directed by nuns, "but
unfortunately I saw M.L. at a window when I thought she was at A. and I
was in a nervous state the whole time. Imagine that that dear woman was at
the window with bare arms, and, as it seemed to me, in her chemise." No
doubt a similar impression might have been made on a girl living in her
own family. But it is certain that the imaginative coloring tends to be
more lively in those living in colleges and shut off from that varied and
innocent observation which renders those outside colleges freer and more
unprejudiced. On a boy who is free to see as many women as he chooses a
woman's face cannot make such an impression as on a boy who lives in a
college and who is liable to be, as it were, electrified if he sees any
object belonging to a woman, especially if he sees it by stealth or durin