Sweet Pains

Henri Bremond, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France: From the Wars of Religion down to our Times, tr. K. L. Montgomery (Macmillan, 1928), vol. I., Devout Humanism, ch. XIV., Towards «Pure Love», pp. 298-99 (with the footnote of the author at p. 299):

The ancients, he [i.e., Charles de Saint-Paul] writes, 

gave Love wings to signify that it elevates and uplifts the spirit above the crouching and servile temper of those coarse souls who are insensible to its influence. His torch . . . shows that it kindles in souls many happy flashes and much excellent knowledge unknown to all who do not know him as he is; the daintiness of wooing instilled by him witnesses that nought is so refining as pure love. Love is represented as young, not because it is rash or to blame for any want of consideration . . . but rather to demonstrate that true and perfect love is immortal. His bow and arrows are typical . . . of the mighty effects of love on the spirits, impressions for which «wounds» is a misnomer . . . (for) they are accompanied with such sweetness of delight and pleasant pains that none who has experienced them but would ever prefer them to the soundness of perfect insensibility.1

1. Tableau de la Madeleine [Tableau de la Magdelaine en l'estat de parfaite amante de Jesus. Où se voient les exercices par lesquels on peut arriver à la gloire d'un semblable estat] (1628), pp. 12-17. This strange monk is moved and ravished by all things. «The organ,» he cries, «this admirable instrument, on which music appears as though upon a triumphal chariot» (p. 47). In another place he describes sucklings at their mothers' breasts. «It happens . . . that quite suddenly the humours (which the milk) sends to their brains cause their little eyes to close, putting them into a sweet languor, during which they do not let go the breast, but remain attached to it without other action than a slow and almost unconscious movement of their lips, with which they imperceptibly mouth the mother's bosom.» (p. 192.)