resemblance to the lad you used to know; one of you exclaims, "How are you, old man?" the other plunges breathlessly into some old school reminiscence; and then . . . that's all.
You begin to say to yourself: "Who is this strange man? what has he been doing all these years? what has been going on in his soul? is he good or bad, a believer or a sceptic? I have nothing in common with him, I don't know the man! He must be observed and studied first—how can I call him a friend?"
What you think of him, he thinks of you, and conversation languishes. With your first words you may have discovered that you and he have followed opposite paths in life; he betrays his democratic tendencies, you, your monarchical leanings; you try him on literature, he retaliates with the culture of silk-worms. Before telling him that you are married, you take the precaution to ask if he has a wife; he answers, "What do you take me for?" and you take leave with a touch of the finger-tips and a smile that has died at its birth.
The friends of infancy! Dear indeed above all others when the years of boyhood have been spent with them; mere phantoms otherwise! And childhood itself! I have never been able to understand why people long to return to it. Why mourn for years without toil, without suffering, without intelligent belief, without those outbursts of fierce and bitter sorrow that purify the soul and
