encountered in nature some one specially
intentional fact having its cause outside the free will of man or the
spontaneous action of the animal.

Thus our friendship was somewhat analogous to that of two eyes when
they look steadily at the same object, and when from two images the
brain receives one and the same perception. Our intellectual growth
was like the phenomenon which occurs through a sort of action due
to close contact and to passive complicity. M. Berthelot looked as
favourably upon what I did as myself; I liked his ways as much as
he could have done himself. There was never so much as a trivial
vulgarity--I will not say a moral slackening of affection--between us.
We were invariably upon the same terms with each other that people are
with a woman for whom they feel respect. When I want to typify what an
unexampled pair of friends we were, I always represent two priests
in their surplices walking arm in arm. This dress does not debar them
from discussing elevated subjects; but it would never occur to them
in such a dress to smoke a cigar, to talk about trifles, or to satisfy
the most legitimate requirements of the body. Flaubert, the novelist,
could never understand that, as Sainte-Beuve relates, the recluses of
Port Royal lived for years in the same house and addressed each other
as Monsieur to the day of their death. The fact of the matter is that
Flaubert had no sort of idea as to what abstract natures are. Not only
did nothing approaching to a familiarity ever pass between us, but
we should have hesitated to ask each other for help, or almost for
advice. To ask a service would, in our view, be an act of corruption,
an injustice towards the rest of the human race; it would, at all
events, be tantamount to acknowledging that there was something to
which we attached a value. But we are so well aware that the temporal
order of things is vain, empty, hollow, and frivolous, that we
hesitate at giving a tangible shape even to friendship. We have too
much regard for each other to be guilty of a weakness towards each
other. Both alike convinced of the insignificance of human affairs,
and possessed of the same aspirations for what is eternal, we could
not bring ourselves to admit having of a set purpose concentrated our
thoughts upon what is casual and accidental. For there can be no doubt
that ordinary friendship presupposes the conviction that all things
are not vain and empty.

Later in life an intimacy of th