Nothing so much wounds a loving heart as to perceive another wounded with the love of it. The pelican builds her nest upon the ground, wherefore serpents often sting her young ones. Now when this happens, the pelican, as an excellent physician, with the point of her beak wounds these poor chicks all over, to cause the poison which the serpents' sting had spread through all the parts of their bodies to flow out with the blood; and to get out all the poison she lets out all the blood, and thus consequently, permits this little pelican-brood to perish. But seeing them dead she wounds herself, and spreading her blood over them she vivifies them with a new and purer life. Her love wounded them, and forthwith by the same love she wounds herself. Never do we wound a heart with the wound of love but we ourselves are wounded with the same. When the soul sees her God wounded by love for her sake, she immediately receives from it a reciprocal wound. Thou hast wounded my heart, [310] said the heavenly lover to the Sulamitess, and the Sulamitess cries out: Tell my beloved that I languish with love. [311] Bees never wound without being themselves wounded to death. And we, seeing the Saviour of our souls wounded to death by love of us, even to the death of the cross,--how can we but be wounded for him, but wounded with a wound as much more dolorously amorous as his was amorously dolorous, and a wound as great as is our inability to love him as much as his love and death require? It is, again, another wound of love, when the soul feels truly that she loves God, and yet he treats her as if he knew not that she loved him, or as if he were distrustful of her love: for then, my dear Theotimus, the soul is put into an extreme anguish, as it is insupportable to her to see and feel even the mere pretence God makes of distrusting her. The poor S. Peter had and felt his heart all filled with love for his master, and Our Lord, hiding his knowledge of it: Peter, said he, dost thou love me more than these? Ah! Lord, said the Apostle, thou knowest that I love thee. But, Peter, lovest thou me, replied Our Saviour. My dear Master, said the Apostle, truly I love thee, thou knowest it. But this sweet master to prove him, and as if showing a diffidence of his love: Peter, said he, dost thou love me? Ah! Lord, thou woundest this poor heart, which greatly afflicted cries out, amorously yet dolorously: Lord thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. [312] It happened once that a possessed person was being exorcised, and the wicked spirit being urged to tell his name: I am, said he, that miserable being deprived of love: and S. Catharine of Genoa who was there present suddenly perceived her whole frame disturbed and disordered, merely from having heard the words, privation of love, pronounced: for as the devils so hate divine love that they quake when they see its sign, or hear its name, that is, when they see the cross, or hear the name of Jesus pronounced, so those who dearly love Our Lord thrill with pain and horror when they see some sign or hear some word, that refers to the privation of this holy love.