If a bee had stung a child, it were to poor purpose to say to him: Ah! my child, the bee that stung you is the very same that makes the honey you are so fond of. For he might say: it is true, that its honey is very pleasant to my taste, but its sting is very painful, and while its sting remains in my cheek I cannot be at peace, and do you not see that my face is all swollen with it? Theotimus, love is indeed a complacency, and consequently very delightful, provided that it does not leave in our heart the sting of desire; for when it leaves this, it leaves therewith a great pain. True it is this pain proceeds from love, and therefore is a loveable and beloved pain. Hear the painful yet love-full ejaculations of a royal lover. My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? My tears have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me daily: where is thy God? [305] And the sacred Sulamitess, wholly steeped in her dolorous loves, speaking to the daughters of Jerusalem: Ah! says she, I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I languish with love. [306] Hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul. [307]

 Now the painful wounds of love are of many sorts.  1. The first strokes we receive from love are called wounds, because the heart which appeared sound, entire and all its own before it loved, being struck with love begins to separate and divide itself from itself, to give itself to the beloved object. Now this separation cannot be made without pain, seeing that pain is nothing but the division of living things which belong to one another.  2. Desire incessantly stings and wounds the heart in which it is, as we have said.  3. But, Theotimus, speaking of heavenly love, there is in the practice of it a kind of wound given by God himself to the soul which he would highly perfect. For he gives her admirable sentiments of and incomparable attractions for his sovereign goodness, as if pressing and soliciting her to love him; and then she forcibly lifts herself up as if to soar higher towards her divine object; but stopping short, because she cannot love as much as she desires:--O God! she feels a pain which has no equal. At the same time that she is powerfully drawn to fly towards her dear well-beloved, she is also powerfully kept back and cannot fly, being chained to the base miseries of this mortal life and of her own powerlessness: she desires the wings of a dove that she may fly away and be at rest, [308] and she finds not. There then she is, rudely tormented between the violence of her desires and her own powerlessness. Unhappy man that I am, said one of those who had experienced this torture, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? [309] In this case, if you notice, Theotimus, it is not the desire of a thing absent that wounds the heart, for the soul feels that her God is present; he has already led her into his wine-cellar, he has planted upon her heart the banner of love: but still, though already he sees her wholly his, he urges her, and from time to time casts a thousand thousand darts of his love, showing her in new ways, how much more he is lovable than loved. And she, who has not so much force to love as love to force herself, seeing her forces so weak in respect of the desire she has to love worthily him whom no force of love can love enough,--Ah! she feels herself tortured with an incomparable pain; for, as many efforts as she makes to fly higher in her desiring love, so many thrills of pain does she receive.