The divinity of truth and good is their bond.

No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,
Their noble meanings are their pawns:
And so thoroughly is known
Each other's counsel by his own,
They can parley without meeting.

At first Madame Swetchine shrank from the excessive agitation she
underwent in listening to the great sermons of Lacordaire in Notre
Dame. "I go through all his perils," she said: "I tremble at every
rock; I feel every stroke. His way of speaking acts upon the human
soul in the same way as sanctity: it wounds; but it enraptures." At
length her attendance on his sermons became so constant, and her
pleasure and admiration so obvious, that many of the congregation
supposed her to be literally, as she was morally, his mother. One
day, as she was leaning against a pillar in the crowded church, her
face upturned towards the pulpit, two persons were heard whispering
to each other: "Would you like to see the preacher's mother?" "Why,
she died ten years ago." "No, there she is: look at her."

The genius of Madame Swetchine was sweeter, serener, more tolerant,
than that of her friend. Her influence on him in these respects was
benignant. He thought more of the strict doctrine: she, more of the
broad and charitable spirit. She once said, concerning dogmas, that
she could consent to see the ocean filtered to a thread of water, if
it but remained pure. He wrote to her, "My dear friend, you have
proved yourself deficient in holy anger; otherwise you would not have
been able to tolerate M." His electric, vehement soul needed exactly
the check her reflective subtilty and prudent consideration gave. So
she tells him once, "I acted as your ballast, or rather I held you by
the skirts of your garment, to retard your too impetuous movements.
Perhaps these are the very attributes with which you would have done
well to invest some one at Rome, who might have united the two
conditions which I fulfilled so perfectly: first, that of not being
you, either in natural disposition, antecedents, or age; second, and
more essential, that of loving you better than you could possibly
love yourself."

With the lapse of years, their attachment grew closer and deeper.
Lacordaire writes from Rome, "I have been bitterly disappointed in
not hearing from you. You know what a need one has of friendly words
when one is alone and so far away." And when the epistle comes, he
writes to her, "I had no sooner opened your letter than my soul was
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