“If a man possesses character,” says Nietzsche, “he will have the same experience over and over again.” Whether or not this may be the case on a grand scale, on a smaller one it seems obviously true. There are paths that lead us repeatedly into the hands of people who serve the same function for us, over and over: passageways that always, in the most diverse periods of life, direct us to the friend, the betrayer, the beloved, the pupil, or the master.