ated it may be regarded as a _divertissement_. Among the common
people, indeed, accusations of this kind are, so far as possible, avoided;
but among persons of quality it is publicly spoken of; it is considered a
fine saying that since Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord has punished no one
for such offences."
[73] Serieux and Libert, "La Bastille et ses Prisonniers," _L'Encephale_,
September, 1911.
[74] Witry, "Notes Historiques sur l'Homosexualite en France," _Revue de
l'Hypnotisme_, January, 1909.
[75] In early Teutonic days there was little or no trace of any punishment
for homosexual practices in Germany. This, according to Hermann Michaelis,
only appeared after the Church had gained power among the West Goths; in
the Breviarium of Alaric II (506), the sodomist was condemned to the
stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of King
Chindasvinds, to castration. The Frankish capitularies of Charlemange's
time adopted ecclesiastical penances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the
German codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the
Justinian code on which they were modelled.
[76] Raffalovich discusses German friendship, _Uranisme et Unisexualite_,
pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd.
viii, p. 611; he especially illustrates this kind of friendship by the
correspondence of the poets Gleim and Jacobi, who used to each other the
language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves.
[77] This letter may be found in Ernst Schur's _Heinrich von Kleist in
seinen Briefen_, p. 295. Dr. J. Sadger has written a pathographic and
psychological study of Kleist, emphasizing the homosexual strain, in the
_Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens_ series.
[78] Alexander's not less distinguished brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt,
though not homosexual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, "the soul of a
woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness I have ever found in
your sex;" he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature. Spranger
(_Wilhelm von Humboldt_, p. 288) says of him that "he had that dual
sexuality without which the moral summits of humanity cannot be reached."
[79] Krupp caused much scandal by his life at Capri, where he was
constantly surrounded by the handsome youths of the place, mandolinists
and street arabs, with whom he was on familiar terms, and on whom
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