MONTAIGNE
obligations: the secret I have sworn not to disclose to another I may without perjury tell to him who is no other, but is myself. 'T is a fairly great miracle to double oneself; and they do not know the size of it who talk of trebling. Nothing is extreme that has a fellow: and whoever imagines that of two I can love one as much as the other, and that they can love each other and me as much as I love them, multiplies into a brotherhood the most single and unique of things, a thing of which even one is the rarest thing in the world to find. The rest of that story agrees very well with what I said: for Eudamidas holds it a kindness and favour to his friends to make use of them at need; he leaves them heirs to this liberality of his which consists of putting into their hands the means to do something for him: and without a doubt the strength of friendship is more richly shown in his action than in Areteus’s. After all, such events are unimaginable for him who has not tasted, and therefore I marvel and honour that young soldier’s reply to Cyrus, who had asked him for how much he would be willing to give a horse with which he had just
won a prize in a race, and whether he would
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