On the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him.

It was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that--being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement--he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.[99] Concerning another great modern writer--Paul Verlaine, the first of modern French poets--it seems possible to speak with less hesitation.

A man who possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of genius, Verlaine--as his work shows and as he himself admitted--all his life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period attracted to women, at another to men.

He was without doubt, it seems to me, bisexual.

An early connection with another young poet, Arthur Rimbaud, terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to Verlaine's imprisonment at Mons.