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 daughter and two and a half for the marriage of Eudamidas’s daughter, whose weddings he celebrated the same day.

This example is very sufficient, if there were not one point to be excepted, which is the multitude of friends; for that perfect friendship I speak of is indivisible: each gives himself so wholly to his friend that he has nothing to bestow elsewhere; on the contrary, he is chagrined that he be not double, triple, or quadruple, and that he have not several selves and several souls, to confer them all on the one object. Common friendships one can divide; one can love in this person his good looks; in another, his ease of manner; in another, his generosity; in that person, his fatherliness; in the other his brotherliness, and so on: but the friendship which possesses the soul and rules her in full sovereignty, it is impossible for that to be double. If both demanded help at the same time, to which would you run? If they required conflicting favours of you, how would you arrange it? If one entrusted to your confidence something it were important to the other to know, how would you get out of that? The unique and principal friendship undoes all other