good
fortune, but that frequently between it and ruin there is but one step?
You do not know how great is the value of friendship, if you do not
understand how much you give to him to whom you give a friend, a
commodity which is scarce not only in men's houses, but in whole
centuries, and which is nowhere scarcer than in the places where it is
thought to be most plentiful. Pray, do you suppose that those books of
names, which your nomenclator [Footnote: The nomenclator was a slave
who attended his master in canvassing and on similar occasions, for
the purpose of telling him the names of whom he met in the street.] can
hardly carry or remember, are those of friends? It is not your friends
who crowd to knock at your door, and who are admitted to your greater or
lesser levees.

XXXIV. To divide one's friends into classes is an old trick of kings and
their imitators; it shows great arrogance to think that to touch or
to pass one's threshold can be a valuable privilege, or to grant as an
honour that you should sit nearer one's front door than others, or enter
house before them, although within the house there are many more doors,
which shut out even those who have been admitted so far. With us Gaius
Gracchus, and shortly after him Livius Drusus, were the first to keep
themselves apart from the mass of their adherents, and to admit some to
their privacy, some to their more select, and others to their general
receptions. These men consequently had friends of the first and second
rank, and so on, but in none had they true friends. Can you apply the
name of friend to one who is admitted in his regular order to pay his
respects to you? or can you expect perfect loyalty from one who is
forced to slip into your presence through a grudgingly-opened door? How
can a man arrive at using bold freedom of speech with you, if he is only
allowed in his proper turn to make use of the common phrase, "Hail to
you," which is used by perfect strangers? Whenever you go to any of
these great men, whose levees interest the whole city, though you find
all the streets beset with throngs of people, and the passers-by hardly
able to make their way through the crowd, you may be sure that you
have come to a place where there are many men, but no friends of their
patron. We must not seek our friends in our entrance hall, but in our
own breast; it is there that he ought to be received, there retained,
and hoarded up in our minds. Teach this, and you will h