Longing

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Kevin shook his head to awaken himself to the present. Texas wasn’t anything like LA. People shook his hand with a friendliness and directness he wasn’t used to. He noticed how both guys and good-looking girls with bleach-blonde hair, and long, Texas-tanned legs, flocked to Jason. He was a sort of hero. Kevin liked being his new roommate and wondered how weird it was that he, the lost kid from LA, was here with this giant of a man. He looked over at Jeff and Trevor and saw the same mystified look on their faces. The band played three more songs that pricked at him; he looked around, and some of the students had their eyes closed and hands raised. Again, he shook his head and wondered where he was. About that time, a guy who looked like he was in his mid-thirties thanked the band and prayed. He prayed in a way that seemed more like a conversation than repeating words to someone far, far away. He said his name was James. James looked at the students filling the brightly lit room. He said, “Welcome to Real Life. I’m your campus pastor. My wife and I are here for you. Kaycie, would you come up here and bring the boys with you?” His wife gathered their three little boys, as she walked to the platform. Her long, red hair was a contrast to most of the blondes in attendance. She was stunning, with soft blue-gray eyes, and was gentle with her three rowdy sons. She put her arm around James’s waist and gave him a warm smile. For the second time since he arrived at Texas A&M, Kevin felt something warm in his gut. Was it a longing? Trust? Again, he brushed the feeling aside to focus on what James was saying after Kaycie and their three little boys rumbled off the platform. James said, “Sometime this year Kaycie will share her story with you. I promise you don’t want to miss what she has to say. My wife is my hero. We have been through some hard times, and we hope our story can help you avoid some of our mistakes. This is Real Life. We don’t pull punches here. We aren’t religious, but we do love Jesus and believe He is alive and real and wants to help each of us do real life. We talk about the issues relevant to college students. So let’s get started. “If you want to turn to the passage I am speaking from, open the Bible app on your smartphone to 1 Thessalonians 4. You might think this is a weird place to begin considering the Apostle Paul starts with, ‘One final word, friends.’ But I love how Paul just gets right to it and since I am a Texas boy I like getting right into it too.” Then he read:

• From The Hours (1998)

  For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”— was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished— how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages. She inhales deeply. It is so beautiful; it is so much more than . . . well, than almost anything, really. In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading. But this is the new world, the rescued world—there’s not much room for idleness. So much has been risked and lost; so many have died. Less than five years ago Dan himself was believed to have died, at Anzio, and when he was revealed two days later to be alive after all (he and some poor boy from Arcadia had had the same name), it seemed he had been resurrected. He seemed to have returned, still sweet-tempered, still smelling like himself, from the realm of the dead (the stories you heard then about Italy, about Saipan and Okinawa, about Japanese mothers who killed their children and themselves rather than be taken prisoner), and when he came back to California he was received as something more than an ordinary hero. He could (in the words of his own alarmed mother) have had anyone, any pageant winner, any vivacious and compliant girl, but through some obscure and possibly perverse genius had kissed, courted, and proposed to his best friend’s older sister, the bookworm, the foreign-looking one with the dark, close-set eyes and the Roman nose, who had never been sought after or cherished; who had always been left alone, to read. What could she say but yes? How could she deny a handsome, good-hearted boy, practically a member of the family, who had come back from the dead? So now she is Laura Brown. Laura Zielski, the solitary girl, the incessant reader, is gone, and here in her place is Laura Brown.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  with His friends around a fire, except He is not rambling about anything, He is really listening, not so much pushing an agenda but being kind and understanding and speaking some truth and encouragement into their lives. Helping them believe in the mission they feel inside themselves, the mission that surrounded Jesus and the crazy life they had embraced. I remember the first time I had feelings for Jesus. It wasn’t very long ago. I had gone to a conference on the coast with some Reed students, and a man spoke who was a professor at a local Bible college. He spoke mostly about the Bible, about how we should read the Bible. He was convincing. He seemed to have an emotional relationship with the Book, the way I think about Catcher in the Rye. This man who was speaking reads through the Bible three times each year. I had never read through the Bible at all. I had read a lot of it but not all of it, and mostly I read it because I felt that I had to; it was healthy or something. The speaker guy asked us to go outside and find a quiet place and get reacquainted with the Book, hold it in our hands and let our eyes feel down the pages. I went out on the steps outside the rest room and opened my Bible to the book of James. Years ago I had a crush on a girl, and I prayed about it and that night read through James, and because it is a book about faith and belief I felt like God was saying that if I had faith she would marry me. So I was very excited about this and lost a lot of weight, but the girl gave her virginity to a jerk from our youth group, and they are married now. I didn’t care, honestly. I didn’t love her that much. I only say that because the book of James, in my Bible, is highlighted in ten colors and underlined all over the place, and it looks blood raw, and the yellow pages remind me of a day when I believed so faithfully in God, so beautifully in God. I read a little, maybe a few pages, then shut the book, very tired and confused. But when we got back from the conference, I felt like my Bible was calling me. I felt this promise that if I read it, if I just read it like a book, cover to cover, it wouldn’t change me into an idiot, it wouldn’t change me into a clone of Pat Buchanan, and that was honestly the thing I was worried about with the Bible. If I read it, it would make me simple in my thinking. So I started in Matthew, which is one of the Gospels about Jesus. And I read through Matthew and Mark, then Luke and John. I read those books in a week or so, and Jesus was very confusing, and I didn’t know if I liked Him very much, and I was certainly tired of Him by the second day. By the time I got to the end of Luke, to the part where they were going to kill

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God’s way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion? We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other. Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him. Will we be in ashes before we are one? What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don’t we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other! I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away. I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The fog that had reigned that morning had turned to snow, which fell in large soft flakes and turned into dung. They parted at the Buddenbrooksche garden gate; but when Hanno was halfway across the front yard, Kai came back and put his arm around his neck. "Don't despair... And don't play!" he said softly; then his slender, unkempt form disappeared into the snow flurry. Hanno left his books in the hallway in the bowl that the bear held out in front of him and went into the living room to greet his mother. She was sitting on the chaise longue reading a book bound in yellow. As he strode across the carpet, she looked at him with her brown ones close together eyes with bluish shadows in the corners. When he stood in front of her, she took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead. He went up to his room, where Miss Clementine had prepared some breakfast for him, washed and ate. When he was done, he took a pack of those small, sharp Russian cigarettes, which he was no longer unfamiliar with, from the desk and began to smoke. Then he sat down at the harmonium and played something very difficult, severe, fugal by Bach. And finally he clasped his hands behind his head and looked out the window at the noiselessly falling snow. There was nothing else to see there. There was no longer a graceful garden with a splashing fountain beneath his window. The view was cut off by the gray side wall of the neighboring villa. At four o'clock lunch was eaten. Gerda Buddenbrook, little Johann and Fraulein Clementine were alone. Later Hanno made the preparations for making music in the salon and waited for his mother at the grand piano. They played Beethoven's Opus 24 Sonata. In the Adagio the violin sang like an angel; but Gerda, dissatisfied, took the instrument from her chin, looked at it sullenly, and said that it wasn't in the right mood. She stopped playing and went upstairs to rest. Hanno stayed behind in the drawing room. He went to the glass door that opened onto the narrow porch and gazed out at the sodden front yard for a few minutes. Suddenly, however, he took a step backwards, violently pulled the cream-colored curtain in front of the door so that the room lay in a yellowish semidarkness, and started toward the grand piano. There he stood again for a while, and his gaze, fixed and vaguely fixed on one point, slowly darkened, became veiled, blurred... He sat down and began one of his fantasies.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  who was there pictured is the only one whom I love, revere, and adore, not as a woman merely, but as an earthly divinity, on whom my life and death depend. The only favour I ask of you, madam, is that the perfect passion, which has been life to me whilst concealed, may not be my death now that I have declared it. If I am worthy that you should regard me and receive me as your most impassioned servant, suffer me at least to live, as I have hitherto done, upon the blissful consciousness that I have dared to give my heart to a being so perfect, and so worthy of all honour, that I must be content to love her, though I can never hope to be loved in re- turn. If the knowledge you now possess of my intense love does not render me more agreeable to your eyes than heretofore, at least do not deprive me of life, which for me consists in the bliss of seeing you as usual. I now receive from you no other favour than that which is absolutely necessary for my existence. If I have less, you will have a servant the less, and will lose the best and most affectionate one you have ever had or ever will have." The queen, whether it vi^as that she might appear other than she really was, or that she might put his love for her to a longer proof, or that she loved another whom she would not forsake for him, or, lastly, that she was glad to have this lover in reserve in case her heart should become vacant through any fault which might possibly be committed by him whom she loved already, said to him, in a tone which expressed neither anger nor satisfaction, " I will not ask you, Elisor, although I know not the power of love, how you can have been so presumptuous and so extravagant as to love me ; for I know that the heart of man is so little at his own com- mand that one cannot love or hate as one chooses. But Third day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 2 4 1 since you have so well concealed your feelings, I desire to know how long you have entertained them ? " Elisor, looking in her beautiful face, and hearing her inquire about his malady, was not without hopes that she would afford him some relief ; but, on the other hand, seeing the self-command and the gravity with which she questioned him, he feared he had to do with a judge who was about to pronounce sentence against him. Not- withstanding this fluctuation between hope and fear, he protested that he had loved her since her early youth ; but that it was only within the last seven years he had been conscious of his pain, or rather of a malady so agreeable that he would rather die than be cured.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  There was in Paris a man so good-natured that he would have scrupled to believe that a man had lain with his wife though he had seen it with his own eyes. This poor man married the most profligate woman in the world, but never noticed her licentiousness, and treated her as though she were the best of wives. But one day, when King Louis XIL was in Paris, this woman went and gave herself up to one of that prince's chanters ; and when she found that the king was quitting Paris and that she was about to lose her lover, she resolved to go with him and quit her husband. The chanter had no objection to this, and took her to a house he had near Blois, where they lived long together. The poor hus- band, not finding his wife, searched for her in all direc- tions, and learned at last that she had gone off with the chanter. Wishing to recover his lost sheep which he had badly guarded, he wrote her several letters, begging her to return and promising to receive her, provided she would lead a good life for the future ; but she took such pleasure in the chanter's singing that she had for- gotten her husband's voice, made no account of his fair words, and snapped her fingers at him. The incensed husband then gave her notice that he would claim her legally through the Church, since she would not return Sixth day.-\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 475 to him of her own accord ; whereupon, fearing that if justice meddled with the matter she and her chanter would come badly off, she devised a scheme worthy of such a woman.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  In the lifetime of the last Duke Charles there was at Alengon a proctor named St. Aignan, who had married a gentlewoman of that country more handsome than vir- tuous, who, for her beauty and her levity, was much courted by the Bishop of Sees. In order to accomplish his ends, this prelate took care to amuse the husband so well, that not only he took no notice of the doings of either of the pair, but even forgot the attachment he had always felt towards his masters. He passed from fidelity to perfidy, and finally went the length of practising sorceries to cause the death of the duchess. The prel- ate maintained a long correspondence with this unlucky woman, who intrigued with him rather from motives of interest than of love ; whereto she was also solicited by her husband. But she entertained such a passion for 14 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Nm>el 1 the son of the Lieutenant-General of Alengon, named Du Mesnil, that it half crazed her ; and she often made the prelate give her husband some commission or an- other, that she might see the lieutenant-general's son at her ease. This affair lasted a long while, the prelate being entertained for her purse, and the other for her pleasure. She vowed to Du Mesnil that, if she received the bishop well, it was only that she might be the more free to continue her caresses to himself ; and that, what- ever she did, the bishop got nothing but words, and he might be assured nobody but himself should ever have anything else of her. One day, when her husband had to wait upon the bishop, she asked leave of him to go to the country, alleging that the air of the city did not agree with her. No sooner had she arrived at his farm than she wrote to the lieutenant's son, bidding him not fail to visit her about ten o'clock at night. The poor young man did so; but on his arrival the servant woman who usually let him in, met him and said, " Go elsewhere, my friend, for your place is filled." Du Mesnil, thinking that the husband had returned, asked the servant how all was going on. Seeing before her a handsome, well-bred young man, the girl could not help pitying him to think how much he loved, and how little he was loved in re- turn. With this feeling, she resolved to acquaint him with her mistress's behaviour, believing that it would cure him of loving her so much. She told him that the Bishop of S6es had but just entered the house, and was in bed with her mistress, who had not expected him till the following day ; but having detained the husband at his own residence, he had stolen away by night to visit her. The lieutenant's son was thunderstruck at this disclosure, and could hardly bring himself to believe it.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  To baffle observation, therefore, he entered into an intrigue with a lady named Paulina, who was considered in her time so beautiful that few men saw her and es- caped her fascinations. Paulina being aware how Ama- dour had made love in Barcelona and Perpignan,and won the hearts of the handsomest ladies in the country, especially that of a certain Countess of Palamos, who was reputed the finest woman in all Spain, told him one day that she pitied him for having, after so many good fortunes, married a wife so ugly as his own. Amadour, who well knew that she had a mind to supply his wants, talked to her in the most engaging terms he could use, hoping to conceal a truth from her by making her be- lieve a falsehood. As she had experience in love, she did not content herself with words, and plainly perceiv- ing that Amadour's heart was not her own, she made no doubt that he wanted to use her as a stalking-horse. With this sufipicion in her mind, she observed hia> w First Jay.l QUEEN OF NA VARRE. yy narrowly that not a single glance of his eyes escaped her; but he managed, though with the utmost difficulty, to regulate them so well that she could never get beyond conjectures. Florida, who had no notion of the nature of Amadour's feelings towards her, used to speak to him so familiarly before Paulina that he could hardly prevent his eyes from following the movements of his heart. To prevent bad consequences, one day, as Florida and he were talking together at a window, he said to her, " My dear, I beseech you to advise me which of the two is better, to speak or to die ? " " I shall always advise my friends to speak," she re- plied, without hesitation ; " for there are few words which cannot be remedied : but from death there is no return." " You promise me, then, that not only you will not be angry at what I want to tell you, but even that you will not give way to surprise until I have laid my whole mind open to you ? " " Say what you please," replied Florida, " for if you surprise me there is no one who can reassure me."

• From The Hours (1998)

  She will never find a love like that which the lone kiss seemed to offer. Virginia, excited, rises from her chair and puts her book on the table. Leonard asks from his own chair, “Are you going to bed?” “No. It’s early, isn’t it?” He scowls at his watch. “It’s nearly half past ten,” he says. “I’m just restless. I’m not tired yet.” “I’d like you to go to bed at eleven,” he says. She nods. She will remain on good behavior, now that London’s been decided on. She leaves the parlor, crosses the foyer, and enters the darkened dining room. Long rectangles of moonlight mixed with street light fall through the window onto the tabletop, are swept away by windblown branches, reappear, and are swept away again. Virginia stands in the doorway, watching the shifting patterns as she would watch waves break on a beach. Yes, Clarissa will have loved a woman. Clarissa will have kissed a woman, only once. Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking, insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa—exultant, ordinary Clarissa—will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visionary, will be the one to die. Mrs. Brown She finishes brushing her teeth. The dishes have been washed and put away, Richie is in bed, her husband is waiting. She rinses the brush under the tap, rinses her mouth, spits into the sink. Her husband will be on his side of the bed, looking up at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. When she enters the room he will look at her as if he is surprised and happy to see her here, his wife, of all people, about to remove her robe, drape it over the chair, and climb into bed with him. That is his way—boyish surprise; a suave, slightly abashed glee; a deep and distracted innocence with sex coiled inside like a spring. She thinks sometimes, can’t help thinking, of those cans of peanuts sold in novelty shops, the ones with the paper snakes waiting to pop out when the lids are opened. There will be no reading tonight. She slips her toothbrush back into its slot in the porcelain holder. When she looks in the medicine-cabinet mirror, she briefly imagines that someone is standing behind her. There is no one, of course; it’s just a trick of the light. For an instant, no more than that, she has imagined some sort of ghost self, a second version of her, standing immediately behind, watching. It’s nothing.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Now, since Greg Spencer told me about truth, when I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them. I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true. 19 Love How to Really Love Yourself I WISH AN I DIFRANCO WASN’T A LESBIAN . I AM listening to her right now, and I think I would marry her if she would have me. I would hang out in the front row at all her concerts and sing along and pump my fist and get angry at all the right times. Then, later, on the bus, she would lay her head on a pillow in my lap, and I would get my fingers tangled in her dreadlocks while we watched Charlie Rose on the television. Some friends and I were walking to our cars one night outside the Roseland after an Emmy Lou Harris concert, and I could see into her bus and Charlie Rose was on the television. I thought to myself, I like that show, and part of me wanted to knock on the window and ask if I could come in. I would not have bothered her or even asked for an autograph. I would have just watched television. He was interviewing Bishop Tutu, I think. By the time I got home the interview was over. If Ani Defranco and I got married, I would write books on the bus rides between cities and in the evening, after the concerts, we would watch Charlie Rose, and three or four times each night we would whisper, Good question, Charlie, good question. But none of this will happen because Ani Difranco is not attracted to men, I don’t think. Otherwise we would be on. [image "9780785263708_0237_002" file=Image00088.jpg] The thing about Reed College you may not know is that it is a beautiful place. I mean the people are beautiful, and I love them. My housemate, Grant, and I were on campus the other day helping kids move into their dorms, and we met this kid Nathan, who needed us to move a couch up to his room. Grant and I were sort of surprised when Nathan started talking to us because, no kidding, he sounded just like Elmer Fudd. He was short and stocky, and nobody but Elmer Fudd himself sounds more like Elmer Fudd than Nathan. Grant almost started laughing, but we tried very hard to listen to the person inside the voice, and so on the way to the storage shed Nathan opened up and told us that as a summer job he worked at Los Alamos, researching nuclear weapons. Nathan does not know his left from his right, which I thought was a peculiar characteristic, given he is one of the smartest people in the world or something.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  good archdeacon, and of several other worthy people, was willing to take her back upon her oath that, for the future, she would behave like an honest woman ; an oath which the simple man, who loved her much, readily believed that she would keep. He took her back into his house, and treated her in all respects as before, except that he gave her two old servant women, one of whom was always with her when the other was elsewhere. But for all her hus- band's good treatment, her extravagant love for the canon made her regard all her repose as a torment. Though she was a very fine woman, and he a man of strong and vigorous temperament, yet she had no children by him, for her heart was always seven leagues away from her body. Nevertheless, such was her dissimulation, that her husband believed she had forgotten the past, as he had done on his part ; but her heart was too wicked to be capable of so happy and laudable a change. At the very time when she saw that her husband loved her most and distrusted her least, she feigned illness, and carried on the deception so well that the poor hus- band was in great distress on her account,. and spared nothing for her cure. At last he and all his household believed that she really was sinking to the grave. Seeing that her husband was as much afflicted at this as he had reason to be rejoiced, she begged he would authorize her to make her will ; which he freely did, with tears in his eyes. Having the power to make a will, because she had no children, she bequeathed to her hus- band all she had in her gift, beseeching his pardon for the affront she had put upon him. Then she sent for the parish priest, confessed, and received the holy sacra- ment of the altar with such devotion that everyone wept at witnessing so fine and so glorious an end. In the evening she begged her husband to have extreme unction 484 THE HF.PTAMERON OF THE \Norvd(i\

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Peace and sleepiness reigned in the room. The heat had become quite intense from the constant heating and the gas lamps, and the air was already quite spoiled by these twenty-five bodies breathing and steaming. The warmth, the gentle hum of the flames and the monotonous voice of the reader wrapped themselves around the bored brains and lulled them into dull dreamy bliss. In addition to his Bible, Kai Graf Mölln also had Edgar Allan Poe's "Incomprehensible Events and Mysterious Deeds" open in front of him and was reading them with his head resting on his aristocratic and not entirely clean hand. Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. propped his head on his aristocratic and not entirely clean hand. Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. propped his head on his aristocratic and not entirely clean hand. Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. And yet it came, as was the order of things, and the shrill wailing sound of the custodian's bell, which rang and echoed through the corridors, roused the twenty-five brains from their warm slumbers.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  to gather in time, lest your enemies and mine profit by our loss. Know, madam, that from the first moment I had the honour of seeing you, I so wholly consecrated my- self to your service, though you were very young, that I have forgotten nothing whereby I could hope to acquire your good grace. It was to that end alone that I mar- ried her whom I thought you loved best ; and knowing the love you bore to the son of the Fortunate Infante, I took pains to serve him and be about him ; in short, whatever I thought could please you, I have tried with all my might to do. You see that I have had the good for- tune to win the esteem of the countess your mother, of the count your brother, and of all those whom you love, and that I am regarded here not as a servant, but as a son of the family. All the pains I have taken for five years have had no other object than to procure me the happiness of passing my whole life with you. I crave no favour or pleasure of you which is not consistent with virtue. I know that I cannot wed you, and if I could I would not do so to the prejudice of the love you bear to him whom I would gladly see as your husband. To love you with a criminal love, like those who presume to think that a lady's dishonour should be the recompense of their long services, is a thought I am so far from en- tertaining, that I would rather see you dead than know that you were less worthy of love, and that your virtue should suffer the least blemish for the sake of any pleas- ure whatever to myself. I ask but one thing of you in recompense for my long services, and that is, that you will deign to become a mistress so loyal as never to re- move me from your good grace, but let me continue on my present footing, and trust in me more than in anyone besides. Furthermore, madam, do me the honour to be well assured that, be the matter what it may, should you First (fay.] QUEEN OF NA VARRE. j^

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The bastard came to see her as usual, but, with tears in her eyes, she related to him in detail all that her gouv- ernante had said to her, and begged him not to visit her any more until this tattle should have subsided ; and he complied with her entreaty. Both of them having lost their consolation through this separation, they began to feel an uneasiness such as neither had ever before experienced. Her whole time was spent in prayer, fasting, and journeying ; for the sentiment of love, so totally new to her, caused her such agitation that she did not know a moment's rest. The bastard was not in a much better plight ; but as he had made up his mind to love her and try to obtain her for a wife, and saw that it would be a very glorious thing for him to succeed in the attempt, his only thought was how he should press his suit, and how he should secure the gouvernante in his interest. To this end he represented to her the deplor- able condition of her mistress, who was wilfully deprived of all consolation. The good woman thanked him with tears for the interest he took in her mistress's welfare, and cast about \vith him for means to enable him to have an interview with her. It was arranged between them that Rolandine should pretend to be troubled with a headache, which made all noise insupportable to her; and that when her companions left her in her chamber, Third day \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. loe the bastard and she might remain alone, and converse together without restraint. The bastard, dehghted with the expedient, gave himself up entirely to the guidance of the gouvernante, and in this way he was enabled to talk with his mistress whenever he pleased.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  they would rather lose their lives than devote them to low things forbidden by honour and conscience ; for the soul which is created only to return to its sovereign good, so long as it is imprisoned in the body, does but long to arrive at that high destination. But because the senses, which can give its views thereof, are obscured and carnal since the sin of our first parents, they can only present to it those visible objects which approach nearest to perfection. In that, direction the soul rushes forth, and thinks to find in outward beauty, in visible graces, and in moral virtues, the supreme boauty, grace, and virtue. But after having sought and proved them, and not found what it loves, the soul lets them go, and passes on its way, like the child who loves apples, pears, dolls, and other trivial things, the handsomest it can see, and thinks that to amass little pebbles is to be wealthy ; but as it grows up it loves living dolls, and amasses things necessary to human life. After a longer experience has shown it that there is neither perfection nor felicity in the things of this earth, it seeks the true felicity, and Him who is its source and principle. Still, if God did not open the eyes of its faith, it would be in danger of passing from ignorance to infidel philosophy ; for it is faith alone that demonstrates and makes the soul receive that good which the carnal and animal man cannot know." " Do you not see," said Longarine, " that even the uncultivated ground, which produces only trees and use- less herbs, is, nevertheless, an object of desire, in the hope that when it is well cultivated and sown it will produce good grain ? In like manner, the heart of man, which is conscious only of visible things, will never ar- rive at the condition of loving God but through the seed of the Word ; for that heart is a sterile, cold, and cor- rupted soil." Sicond day\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 185 *' Thence it comes," said Saffredent, " that most doc- tors are not spiritual, because they never love anything but good wine and ugly sluts of chambermaids, without makino- trial of what it is to love honourable ladies." "If I could speak Latin well," said Simontault, " I would quote St. John to you, who says, ' He who loves not his brother whom he sees, how shall he love God whom he doth not see ? ' In loving visible things, one comes to love things invisible." " Tell us where is the man so perfect as you describe, et laudabivius emn," said Ennasuite.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The ultimate good is also known as comprehension (comprehensio), a word suggested by Philippians 3:12: “I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend” (comprehendam). The term is not, of course, used in the sense according to which comprehension implies enclosing; for what is enclosed by another is completely contained by it as a whole. The created intellect cannot completely see God’s essence, in such a way, that is, as to attain to the ultimate and perfect degree of the divine vision, and so to see God to the extent that He is capable of being seen. For God is knowable in a way that is proportionate to the clarity of His truth, and this is infinite. Hence He is infinitely knowable. But infinite knowledge is impossible for a created intellect, whose power of understanding is finite. God alone, therefore, who knows Himself infinitely well with the infinite power of His intellect, comprehends Himself by completely understanding Himself. Nevertheless comprehension is promised to the saints, in the sense of the word, comprehension, that implies a certain grasp. Thus when one man pursues another, he is said to apprehend (dicitur comprehendere) the latter when he can grasp him with his hand. Accordingly, “while we are in the body,” as the matter is put in 2 Corinthians 5:6 ff., “we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith and not by sight.” And so we press on toward Him as toward some distant goal. But when we see Him by direct vision we shall hold Him present within ourselves. Thus in Canticles 3:4, the spouse seeks him whom her soul loves; and when at last she finds him she says: “I held him, and I will not let him go.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  1. Contempt of sins; A soul that is full shall tread on the honeycomb. Prov. 27:7. The trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou and reign over us. And it answered them, Can I leave my sweetness and my delicious fruits, and go to be promoted among the other trees? Judges 9:10, 11. 2. The grace of good words; Thy lips, My spouse, are as a dropping honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue. Cantic. 4:11. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of a good treasure bringeth forth good things. St. Matt. 12:34, 35. 3. Longing for God; They that eat Me shall yet hunger; and they that drink Me shall yet thirst. Ecclus. 24:29. It shall spring up and rejoice in its showers. Ps. 64:11. As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul longeth after Thee, O God. My soul is athirst for the strong living God: when shall I come and appear before the face of God? Ps. 41:2, 3. (3) The spiritual draught of the Blood of Jesus; I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers … all drank the same spiritual drink: and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 1 Cor. 10:1, 4. I will water My garden of plants; and I will water abundantly the fruits of My meadow. Ecclus. 24:42. We also … cease not to pray for you … that you may walk worthy of God in all things pleasing, being fruitful in every good work. Col. 1:9, 10. In that day there shall be singing to the vineyard of pure wine. I am the Lord that keep it; I will suddenly give it drink; lest any hurt come to it, I keep it night and day. Is. 27:2, 3. 1. Good lives; As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. I am the mother of fair love and of fear and of knowledge and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, and in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. Ecclus. 24:23–26.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: Those who love themselves are to be blamed, in so far as they love themselves as regards their sensitive nature, which they humor. This is not to love oneself truly according to one’s rational nature, so as to desire for oneself the good things which pertain to the perfection of reason: and in this way chiefly it is through charity that a man loves himself. Whether a man ought to love his body out of charity?Objection 1: It would seem that a man ought not to love his body out of charity. For we do not love one with whom we are unwilling to associate. But those who have charity shun the society of the body, according to Rom. 7:24: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” and Phil. 1:23: “Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” Therefore our bodies are not to be loved out of charity. Objection 2: Further, the friendship of charity is based on fellowship in the enjoyment of God. But the body can have no share in that enjoyment. Therefore the body is not to be loved out of charity. Objection 3: Further, since charity is a kind of friendship it is towards those who are capable of loving in return. But our body cannot love us out of charity. Therefore it should not be loved out of charity. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 23,26) that there are four things that we should love out of charity, and among them he reckons our own body. I answer that, Our bodies can be considered in two ways: first, in respect of their nature, secondly, in respect of the corruption of sin and its punishment. Now the nature of our body was created, not by an evil principle, as the Manicheans pretend, but by God. Hence we can use it for God’s service, according to Rom. 6:13: “Present . . . your members as instruments of justice unto God.” Consequently, out of the love of charity with which we love God, we ought to love our bodies also, but we ought not to love the evil effects of sin and the corruption of punishment; we ought rather, by the desire of charity, to long for the removal of such things. Reply to Objection 1: The Apostle did not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor. 5:4: “We would not be unclothed, but clothed over.” He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God. Hence he says expressly: “From the body of this death.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Less than a year ago there was in Cremona a gen- tleman named Messire Jean Pierre, who had long loved a lady in his neighbourhood ; but for all he could do he had never been able to obtain from her the response he longed for, though she loved him with all her heart. The poor gentleman was so distressed at this that he secluded himself at hoine, resolving to abandon a vain pursuit in which he was wasting his life. Thinking to detach himself from his cruel fair one, he remained some days without seeing her, and fell into such a pro- found melancholy that no one would have known him, so altered were his looks. His relations sent for physi- cians, who, seeing his face yellow, thought it was an obstruction of the liver, and bled him. The lady who had been so coy, knowing very well that his illness was nothmg but grief that she had not responded to his love, sent a trusty old woman with orders to tell hiin that, as she could no longer doubt that his love was genuine and sincere, she had made up her mind to grant him what she had so long refused ; and to that end she had con- trived means to leave home and go to a place where he might see her without impediment. The gentleman, who had been let blood that morn- ing from the arm, finding himself more relieved by this embassy than by all the remedies of his physicians, sent her word that he would not fail to meet her at the ap- 42 2 THE HEPTAMEKON OF THE \_Noz^d ^q.