“As you have made me begin to teach our unyouthful Courtier happy love, I fain would lead him a little farther; for it is very dangerous to stop at this stage, seeing that the soul is very prone to the senses, as has many times been said; and although reason and argument choose well and perceive that beauty does not spring from the body, and although they therefore put a bridle upon unseemly desires, still, always contemplating beauty in the body often perverts sound judgment. And even if no other evil flowed therefrom, absence from the beloved object brings much suffering with it, because the influence of her beauty gives the lover wonderful delight when she is present, and by warming his heart wakens and melts certain dormant and frozen forces in his soul, which (being nourished by the warmth of love) spread and blossom about his heart, and send forth through the eyes those spirits that are very subtle vapours made of the purest and brightest part of the blood, which receive the image of her beauty and fashion it with a thousand various ornaments. Hence the soul delights, and trembles with awe and yet rejoices, and as in a stupour feels not only pleasure, but that fear and reverence which we are wont to have for sacred things, and speaks of being in paradise. 66.—“Therefore the lover who considers beauty in the body only, loses this blessing and felicity as soon as his beloved lady by her absence leaves his eyes without their splendour, and his soul consequently widowed of its blessing. Because, her beauty being far away, that amourous influence does not warm his heart as it did in her presence; wherefore his pores become arid and dry, and still the memory of her beauty stirs a little those forces of his soul, so that they seek to scatter abroad the spirits; and these, finding the ways shut, have no exit, and yet seek to issue forth; and thus hemmed in by those goads, they sting the soul and give it keenest suffering, as in the case of children when the teeth begin to come through the tender gums. And from this proceed the tears, the sighs, the anguish and the torments of lovers, because the soul is ever in affliction and travail, and becomes almost raging until her dear beauty appears to it again; and then it suddenly is calmed and breathes, and all intent upon that beauty it feeds on sweetest food, nor would ever part from so delightful a spectacle.