Chapter 13

Josaphat, very well pleased with this

parable, said: How true this word is, and most fitting. Do not, then, hesitate to keep showing me such figures, that I may know exactly what our life is like, and of what things it becomes the procurer for its own friends. The old man said: Again, those who are enamored of the delights of life and made sweet by its pleasantness, who prefer the fleeting and feeble things to the things to come that do not waver, are like a certain man who had three friends. Two of them he honored with passionate affection, and clung strongly to their love, contending for them even unto death and choosing to face danger on their behalf; but toward the third he behaved with great contempt, never counting him worthy of honor or of the love that was his due, but feigning only some small and worthless friendship toward him. Now one day certain fearful and extraordinary soldiers came, hastening with great speed to bring this man to the king, that he might render account for a debt of ten thousand talents. In his distress he sought a helper, one able to take his part in the king's terrible reckoning. So running to the first and most genuine of all his friends, he said: You know, my friend, that I always laid down my life for you; now I need help on this day of the necessity that holds me.

How much, then, do you undertake to assist me now? And what hope is there for me from you, dearest friend? That friend answered and said: I am not your friend, man; I do not know who you are. For I have other friends, with whom I must make merry today and whom I must gain as friends for the future. But see, I give you two rags, to have with you on the road you are traveling—which will be of no use to you at all. And expect no other hope from me. Hearing this, and despairing of the help he had hoped for from him, the man goes to his second friend, and says: You remember, my comrade, how much honor and good regard you enjoyed from me; but today, having fallen into affliction and the greatest misfortune, I need a fellow-worker. How much, then, are you able to labor with me? Let me know at once. He says: I am not free today to contend alongside you; for I too have fallen into cares and troubles and am in affliction. Still, I will go a little way along the road with you, even if I am of no use to you; and then, turning back home quickly, I will be busy with my own cares. So returning from there too with empty hands and at a loss on every side, the man counted himself wretched for the vain hope he had set on his ungrateful friends, and for the useless hardships he had endured for love of them. He goes at last to his third friend,

whom he had never served, nor invited to share his gladness; and he says to him, with a shamed and downcast face: I have no mouth to open to you, knowing well that you do not remember my ever doing you a good turn or being affectionately disposed toward you. But since a most grievous misfortune has overtaken me, and I have found no hope of deliverance from any of my other friends, I have come to you, entreating you, if you have the strength, to grant me some small help. Do not, then, refuse, holding a grudge against my ingratitude. He says, with a cheerful and gracious face: Yes indeed, I confess you to be my most genuine friend; and remembering that small kindness of yours, I will repay you today with interest. Do not fear, then, nor be afraid; for I will go before you, I will entreat the king on your behalf, and I will by no means hand you over into the hands of your enemies. Take courage, then, dearest friend, and do not grieve. Then, pierced to the heart, the man said with tears: Alas, what shall I lament first, and what shall I weep for first? Shall I condemn my vain attachment to those forgetful and thankless and false friends? Or shall I count wretched the senseless ingratitude

that I showed toward this true and genuine friend? Josaphat, receiving this word too with wonder, sought its meaning. And Barlaam said: The first friend would be the abundance of wealth and the love of money, on account of which a man falls into countless dangers and endures many hardships; but when the last appointed day of death comes, he takes none of all those things, except the useless rags for his burial. The second friend is called wife and children and the rest of one's kin and household, to whose attachment we cling and from which we are hard to be torn, despising the love of our very soul and body for their sake; but no one has gained any benefit from them in the hour of death—rather they only accompany him as far as the tomb, following along, and then, turning back at once, are taken up with their own cares and troubles, covering the memory with forgetfulness no less than they covered with the grave the body of the one once dear to them. But the third friend, the neglected and burdensome one, the unapproachable, but rather shunned and as it were repugnant, is the company of the noblest works—such as faith, hope, love, almsgiving, love of mankind, and the rest of the throng of the virtues—which is able to go before us when we leave the body, and to entreat the Lord for us, and to ransom us from our enemies and the dreadful tax-collectors who set in motion a bitter reckoning against us in the air and seek bitterly to overpower us. This is the good and grateful friend,

who keeps our small good deed in remembrance and repays us all of it with interest.