* * * * *

Now Master Richard described the state into which he fell under a
curious name that I cannot altogether understand. He said that there be
three _nights_ through which the contemplative soul must pass or ever it
come to the dawn. The first two he had gone through during his life in
the country; the first is a kind of long-continued dryness, when
spiritual things have no savour; the second is an affection of the mind,
when not even meditation [This is an exercise distinct from contemplation
apparently. I include this passage, in spite of its technicalities, for
obvious reasons.] appears possible; the mind is like a restless fly that
is at once weary and active. This second is not often attained to by
ordinary souls, though all men who serve God have a shadow of it. It is
a very terrible state. Master Richard told me that before he suffered it
he had not conceived that such conflict was possible to man. It was
during this time that the fiend came to him in form of a woman. The
imagination that cannot fix itself upon the things of God is wide-awake
to all other impressions of sense. [I do not think that Sir John
understands what he is writing about, though he does his best to appear
as if he did. I have omitted a couple of incoherent paragraphs.]....

Now, these two first _nights_ I think I understand, for he told me that
what he suffered during his whipping in the hall and the strife of his
mind with the clerk were each a kind of symbol of them. But the third,
which he called the _Night of the Soul_ I do not understand at all. [It
is remarkable that this phrase frequently occurs in the writings of St.
John of the Cross, though he treats it differently. Until I came across
it in this MS. I had always thought that the Spanish mystic was the
first to use it.] This only can I say of the state itself: that Master