"Of course, I can't remember a time when I didn't have them. Even in
my cradle, so mother has told me, I was _supersensual._ I scorned the
healthy breast of my nurse, and had to be brought up on goats' milk.
As a little boy I was mysteriously shy before women, which really was
only an expression of an inordinate interest in them. I was oppressed
by the gray arches and half-darknesses of the church, and actually
afraid of the glittering altars and images of the saints. Secretly,
however, I sneaked as to a secret joy to a plaster-Venus which stood
in my father's little library. I kneeled down before her, and to her I
said the prayers I had been taught--the Paternoster, the Ave Maria,
and the Credo.

"Once at night I left my bed to visit her. The sickle of the moon
was my light and showed me the goddess in a pale-blue cold light. I
prostrated myself before her and kissed her cold feet, as I had seen
our peasants do when they kissed the feet of the dead Savior.

"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