as an _asile de surete_
for abnormal persons whom it was considered unsafe to leave at large.
Inverts whose conduct became too offensive to be tolerated were frequently
placed in the Bastille which, indeed "abounded in homosexual subjects," to
a greater extent than any other class of sexual perverts. Some of the
affairs which led to the Bastille have a modern air. One such case on a
large scale occurred in 1702, and reveals an organized system of
homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a
handsome, well-made youth named Lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing
himself off as a man of quality. Seduced at the age of 10 by a famous
sodomist named Duplessis, he had since been at the disposition of a number
of homosexual persons, including officers, priests, and marquises. Some of
the persons involved in these affairs were burned alive; some cut their
own throats; others again were set at liberty or transferred to the
Bicetre.[73] During the latter part of the eighteenth century, also, we
find another modern homosexual practice recognized in France; the
rendezvous or center where homosexual persons could quietly meet each
other.[74]

Inversion has always been easy to trace in Germany. Ammianus Marcellinus
bears witness to its prevalence among some German tribes in later Roman
days.[75] In mediaeval times, as Schultz points out, references to sodomy
in Germany were far from uncommon. Various princes of the German Imperial
house, and of other princely families in the Middle Ages, were noted for
their intimate friendships. At a later date, attention has frequently been
called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked German
friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual
relationship.[76] The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that
abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly
favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On
this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come
to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the
poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament,
and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler
than those for his friend. To this friend, Ernst von Pfuel (afterward
Prussian war minister), Kleist wrote in 1805 at the age of 28: "You bring
the days of the Greeks back to me; I could sleep with yo