  We present the XMM-Newton spectra of three low-redshift intermediate Seyferts
(one Sy1.5, and two Sy1.8), from our survey of hard spectrum Rosat sources. The
three AGN are well fitted by absorbed powerlaws, with intrinsic nuclear
photoelectric absorption from column densities between 1.3 and 4.0e21 cm-2. In
the brightest object the X-ray spectrum is good enough to show that the
absorber is not significantly ionized. For all three objects the powerlaw
slopes appear to be somewhat flatter (Gamma~1.3-1.6) than those found in
typical unabsorbed Seyferts. The constraints from optical and X-ray emission
lines imply that all three objects are Compton-thin. For the two fainter
objects, the reddening deduced from the optical broad emission lines in one of
them, and the optical continuum in the other, are similar to those expected
from the X-ray absorption, if we assume a Galactic gas-to-dust ratio and
reddening curve. The broad line region Balmer decrement of our brightest object
is larger than expected from its X-ray absorption, which can be explained
either by an intrinsic Balmer decrement with standard gas-to-dust ratio, or by
a >Galactic gas-to-dust ratio. These >=Galactic ratios of extinction to
photoelectric absorption cannot extend to the high redshift, high luminosity,
broad line AGN in our sample, because they have column densities >1e22 cm-2,
and so their broad line regions would be totally obscured. This means that some
effect (e.g., luminosity dependence, or evolution) needs to be present in order
to explain the whole population of absorbed AGN.
