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ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

ance at the same time, to which would you hasten? If they should require from you inconsistent services, what course would you pursue? If one entrusted to your secrecy a thing which it would be useful for the other to know, how would you extricate yourself? The sole and principal friendship dissolves all other obligations. The secret that I have sworn to disclose to no other, I may without perjury make known to him who is not another — he is myself. It is enough of a miracle to double oneself, and they do not know the greatness of it who talk of making themselves three. Nothing is the uttermost which has its like; and whoever imagines that of two persons I love one as dearly as the other, and that they love each other and me as much as I love them, he multiplies into a society the most single and indivisible of things,[1] of which a single instance is the hardest thing in the world to find.

(a) The rest of this tale agrees entirely with what I was saying: for Eudamidas bestows upon his friends the boon and favour of using them for his need; he makes them inheritors of that liberality of his which consists in placing in their hands the means of benefitting him. And unquestionably the strength of friendship manifests itself much more abundantly in his act than in that of Aretheus. To conclude, these conditions are inconceivable to him who has never experienced them, (c) and they lead me to praise exceedingly the reply of the young soldier to Cyrus, who asked him for how much he would sell a horse with which he had just won the prize of the race, and whether he would exchange him for a kingdom: “Surely not, sire; but I would readily part with him to gain thereby a friend, if I could find a man worthy of such fellowship.”[2] Well did he say, “if I could find”; for one easily finds men fit for a superficial acquaintance; but in this other sort, in which one deals from the deepest depths of his heart, and without any reserve, certainly it is essential that all the parts that come into play [3] be perfectly spotless and reliable.

In those connections which hold by but one end we have only to take heed of the imperfections which particularly

  1. ↑ La chose la plus une et unie.
  2. ↑ See Xenophon, Cyropædia, VIII, 3.
  3. ↑ Tous les ressorts.
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