The Cords of Vanity by James Branch Cabell

For in old Fairhaven I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many memories of Bettie Hamlyn. Her father taught me Latin at King's College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy -- almost. Looking back, I have not ever been intimate with anybody.

Not but that I had my friends. In particular I remember those four of us who always called ourselves -- in flat defiance, just as Dumas did, of mere arithmetic -- "The Three Musketeers. " I think that we loved one another very greatly during the four years we spent together in our youth. I like to believe we did, and to remember the boys who were once unreasonably happy, even now. It does not seem to count, somehow, that Aramis has taken to drink and every other inexpedient course, I hear, and that I would not recognize him today, were we two to encounter casually -- or Athos, either, I suppose, now that he has been so long in the Philippines.