dramatically, redeemed in part by magnificent courage and tact, in
their very sins. "Our force is no more able to reach them in their
vicious than in their virtuous qualities; for both the one and the
other proceed from a vigour of soul which was without comparison
greater in them than in us."

And yet, thinking of his friendship with the "incomparable Etienne de
la Boetie, so perfect, inviolate and entire, that the like is hardly
to be found in story," he had to confess that the sources of
greatness must still be quick in the world. That had remained with
him as his one fixed standard of value in the estimate of men and
things. On this single point, antiquity itself had been surpassed;
the discourses it had left upon friendship seeming to him "poor and
flat in comparison of the sense he had of it." For once, his
sleepless habit of analysis had been checked by the inexplicable, the
absolute; [99] amid his jealously guarded indifference of soul he had
been summoned to yield, and had yielded, to the magnetic power of
another. "We were halves throughout, so that methinks by outliving
him I defraud him of his part. I was so grown to be always his
double in all things that methinks I am no more than half of myself.
There is no action or thought of mine wherein I do not miss him, as I
know that he would have missed me." Tender yet heroic, impulsive yet
so wise, he might have done what the survivor (so it seemed to
himself) was but vainly trying to do. It was worth his while to
become famous, if that hapless memory might but be embalmed in one's
fame. It had been better than love,--that friendship! to the
building of which so much "concurrence" had been requisite, that
"'twas much if fortune brought the like to pass once in three ages."
Actually, we may think, the "sweet society" of those four years, in
comparison with which the rest of his so pleasant life "was but