________________________________________ 133. The beloved dressed his lover with cloak, coat, gown; and he made him a hat out of love, and a shirt out of thoughts, and trousers out of grief, and garland out of weepings. 134. The beloved pleaded to his lover not to forget him. The lover said he could not forget him, for he could not ignore him. 135. The beloved told the lover to praise him and excuse him in those places where it was most dreadful to praise him. The lover asked to be given plenty of love. The beloved answered that for his love he had been incarnated and had been hanged to die. 136. The lover asked his dear beloved to show him how he could make him be known, loved, and praised by the people. The beloved filled his lover with devotion, patience, charity, restlessness, thoughts, sighs, and tears; and boldness to praise his beloved grew in the heart of the lover, and praise for his beloved rose in his mouth, and in his will he fostered disregard for the cursing by the people who make false judgement. 137. The lover said these words to the people: - He who truly remembers my beloved, forgets, in the circumstances of his remembrance, all things; and he who forgets all things to remember his beloved is defended from everything, and is given part of everything, by my beloved. 138. The lover was asked what love was born from, and what it lived out of, and what it died for. He answered that love was born of remembrance, lived out of intelligence, and died by oblivion. 139. The lover forgot everything that is under the supreme heaven, to let his understanding rise higher to know the beloved, whom the will wished to preach and contemplate. 140. The lover was going to fight to honor his beloved, and he steered to his side faith, hopefulness, charity, justice, caution, fortitude, moderation, which he could overcome the enemies of his beloved with. The lover would have been vanquished, had his beloved not helped him in exhibiting his nobilities. 141. The lover wanted to proceed to the ultimate purpose why he loved his beloved, and the other goals became and encumbrance to his passage; whereby, long desires and thoughts gave the lover sadness and grief. 142. The lover rejoiced and took pride in the noble works of his beloved; he languished in deep meditation and thought. And it was wondered which one he felt most intensely, the pleasures or the anguish. 143. The lover was the messenger to the Christian princes, and to the infidels, of his beloved, to show them the art and the beginnings of knowing and loving his beloved. 144. If you see a lover honored in noble clothes, honored by conceit, fat from eating and sleeping, let it be known that you see in him damnation and torment. And if you see a lover poorly dressed, despised by the people, discolored and lean from fasting and staying awake, let it be known that you see in him salvation and lasting blessing. 145. The lover complains, and the heart cries out for warmth of love. The lover dies, the beloved mourns him, and he gives him solace of patience, hopefulness, reward. 146. The lover cried for that which he had lost; and he could not be comforted by anyone, since what he had lost was unrecoverable. 147. God has created night for the lover to be awake and reflect on the righteousness of his beloved; and the lover surmised that he had created it for those who have worked for love to rest and sleep. 148. The people rebuked and scoffed at teh lover for being crazy for love. And the lover disregarded their jibes, and reproved the people for not loving his beloved. 149. The lover said: - I am vilely dressed in rags, but love dresses my heart in pleasant thoughts, and my body in tears, distress, passion. 150. The beloved sang and said: - My worshippers are to praise my values; and the enemies of my graciousness hurt and disregard my values. And that is why I have informed my lover to regret and to weep for my dishonor; and his laments and his weepings are born from my love. 151. The lover promised the beloved that he bore and liked hardship and passion for his love; and therefore he pleaded the beloved to love him and to have compassion of his troubles. The beloved assured that it was the nature and property of his love to love everyone who loved him, and to have mercy of anyone who bore hardship for his love. The lover was glad and comforted by the nature and essencial property of his beloved. 152. Words were forbidden to the lover by his beloved, and the lover found solace in watching his beloved. 153. So much did the lover cry and call his beloved, till the beloved descended from the subleme heights of the Heavens, and he came to Earth to weep and to lament, to die for love, and to nurture men into loving, knowing, and praising his honors. 154. The lover blamed the Christians for not having first in their letters the name of their beloved, Jesus Christ, to make him the honor that the moors make to Muhammad, (...), whom they honor when they name him first in their letters. 155. The lover met with a squire who was going in deep thought and who was lean, discolored, and poorly dressed; and he greeted the lover wishing him to be led by God to find his beloved. And the lover asked him how he had known him. And the squire said that one secret of love reveals the others; and thereby lovers can recognize each other. 156. The kindness, and the wonders and the good deeds of the beloved are the treasure and wealth of the lover. And the treasure of the beloved are the thoughts, the wishes, the pain, the weeping and the sorrows that the lover bears to honor and to love his beloved. 157. Great hosts and battalions have been engaged with the spirits of love, and they carry a sign of love having the image and the mark of their beloved, and they do not want to bring anybody along in their company who is without love, lest their beloved would take it as a dishonor. 158. Men who pretend to be crazy in order to make money drive the lover to be crazy for love; and the shame the lover feels from the people for going like a mad man offers him a way to love and appreciate the people. So one wonders which of these two impulses is a greater opportunity for love. 159. Love had put the lover in sadness from excessive concentration; and the beloved sang, and the lover rejoiced when he had heard him. And it was wondered which of these two actions was the best occasion to multiply love in the lover. 160. In the secrets of the lover the secrets of the beloved are revealed, and in the secrets of the beloved the secrets of the lover are revealed. And one wonders which of the two secrets is the greatest means of revelation. 161. The crazy one was asked what signs his beloved was known by. He replied, and said it was by mercy, compassion, being essentially in will, without any change. 162. Because of the special love the lover had for his beloved, he loved the communal good over the special good, so that his beloved could be communally known, praised, desired. 163. Love and hatred met in a garden where the lover and the beloved were secretly talking; and love asked hatred what purpose she had come for to that place; and hatred replied it had come to take love away from the lover and to dishonor the beloved. The beloved and the lover were greatly displeased by what hatred was saying; and they multiplied love to let her defeat and destroy hatred. 164. - Tell me, crazy: what do you feel the greatest will in: loving, or hating? He answered that in loving, since he hated so that he could love. 165. - Tell me, lover: what do you have the most understanding of: truth, or falsity? He replied it was of truth. - Why? - Because I understand falsity to be able to better understand truth. 166. The lover perceived that he was loved by his beloved, and he asked the beloved if his love and his mercy were in him one and the same thing. The beloved accepted that, in their essence, there is no difference, there is no difference between his love and his mercy. Whence the lover asked why his love tormented him, and why his mercy did not heal him from his pain. And the beloved replied that mercy gave him pain to more perfectly honor his love with. 167. The lover wished to go to a strange land to honor his beloved, and wanted to disguise himself to avoid being abducted along the way. And he could never disguise weeping from his eyes, nor the lean features and yellow color from his face, nor moans, thoughts, sighs, sadness, sorrows, from his heart; hence, he was abducted on his journey, and handed over to be tormented by the enemies of his beloved. 168. The lover was locked in the jail of love. Thoughts, desires and memories guarded him and chained him to prevent him from fleeing to his beloved; distress tormented him; patience, hopefulness comforted him. The lover would have died; but the beloved showed him his glory, and the lover revived. 169. The lover ran across his beloved: he recognized his beloved, and wept. The beloved reprimanded his lover because he did not weep before recognizing him; and asked him how he had known him, since he did not weep. The lover replied he had known him in remembrance, in understanding, and in his will, which were multiplied as soon as he had been present to his corporal eyes. 170. The beloved asked the lover what love was. He replied it was the presence of the ways and words of the beloved in the longing heart of the lover, and sorrow through desires and tears in the lover's heart. 171. Love is the boiling of baldness and awe through fervor; and love is the final will to desire his beloved. And love is that thing which killed the lover when he heard the song of the beauty of his beloved. And love is that which is dead, and which my will is always with. 172. Devotion and longing sent thoughts by messengers to the heart of the lover, so that water would rise to the eyes, who wanted to cease the weeping which they had long sustained. 173. Said the lover: - If you, lovers, would like fire, come to my heart and light your lamps; if you want water, come to my eyes, which pour out tears; and if you want thoughts of love, come to take them in my meditations. 174. The lover was thinking one day on the great love he felt for his beloved, and on the great trouble and danger he had long been through for his love; and he pondered that his reward would be great. While he was meditating in this way, he remembered he had been paid by his beloved, since he had been enraptured by his features, and for his love he had given him sorrows. 175. The lover wiped his face and his eyes of the tears he sustained for love, to keep the sorrows that his beloved gave him from being discovered; and the beloved said to his lover why he was concealing from the other loving people the signs of love, which he had been given to enamour them of honoring his values. 176. - Tell me, man who goes like mad for love: how long will you be a serf, subjected to weep and to sustain hardship and sorrows? He answered: - Until that time when my beloved will bring about in me separation of the soul and the body. 177. - Tell me, crazy: do you have money? He answered: - I have my beloved. - Do you own towns, or castles, or cities, or counties, or duchies? He answered: - I have love, thoughts, plants, desires, hardship, sorrows, which are better than empires or kingdoms. 178. The lover was asked how he was aware of the sentence of his beloved. He replied it was through the balance of pleasure and sorrows, in which his beloved judged his lovers. 179. - Tell me, crazy one: who knows best about love, he who derives pleasure, or he who derives hardship and sorrows from it? He replied, and said that knowledge cannot be gained from one without the other. 180. The lover was asked why he did not excuse himself of the failures and false crimes he was accused of by the people. He answered that he had to excuse his beloved, who was falsely blamed by the people; and man, upon whom error and deceit may fall, is not quite worthy of any excuse. 181. - Tell me, crazy one: why do you excuse love, when she gives trouble and torment to your body and your heart? He answered: - Because she multiplies my merit and my blessings. 182. The lover complained of his beloved for tormenting him so gravely for love; and the beloved excused himself by multiplying hardship and danger, thoughts, tears and plants to the lover. 183. - Tell me, crazy one: why do you excuse the guilty? He answered: - Not to be like those who accuse the innocent and the guilty. 184. The beloved raised intelligence to let her understand his majesty, in order that the lover's memory were ready to realise his failings, and his will despised them and rose to love the virtues of his beloved. 185. The lover was singing of his beloved, and he said he gave him such good will that all the things he hated for the love of his beloved rewarded him with more pleasant and greater joy than the things he loved without the love of his beloved. 186. The lover was in a big city, and he was asking if he would find anyone who he could talk to at his leisure of his beloved. And they showed him a poor man who wept for love and was searching for a companion whom he could talk to about love. 187. The lover was thoughtful and puzzled over how his hardship could originate in the majesty of his beloved, who possesses so much bliss in his own self. 188. The thoughts of the lover were between oblivion of his agony and remembrance of his pleasure: for by the pleasure he derives from love he forgets hardship, and by the agony he endures for love he is reminded of the bliss he enjoys because of love. 189. The lover was asked if it might be possible that his beloved would take love away from him. He answered it was not possible, as long as his memory remembered and his intelligence understood the glory of his beloved. 190. - Tell me, crazy one: What can one make the greatest comparison of and find the greatest resemblance in? He answered: - Of lover and beloved. They asked him for what reason. He replied it was because of love, who was between them. 191. The beloved was asked if he had had mercy at any time. He answered that had he not had mercy, he would not have enamoured the lover, neither would he have tormented him with sighs, weeping, hardship, and sorrows. 192. The lover was in a great forest, where he was searching for his beloved; and he met truth and falseness who were arguing about his beloved, since truth praised him and falseness blamed him. And hence, the lover called on love to help truth. 193. A temptation came to the lover to be kept apart from his beloved, and then to let memory wake up and recover the presence of his beloved, remembering him better than ever before, so that his intelligence would rise higher in understanding, and his will in loving, his beloved. 194. One day the lover forgot his beloved, and another day he remembered he had forgotten him. And in that day when the lover remembered he had forgotten his beloved, he was sad and in pain, and he was in glory and bliss, for oblivion and remembrance. 195. So intensely was the lover wishing for praise and for the glory of his beloved, that he doubted he remembered them; and so intensely he hated dishonor for his beloved, that he doubted he hated it. Hence, the lover was puzzled, between love and fear, by his beloved. 196. The lover died through pleasure, and lived through sorrow; and the pleasure and the suffering came together and were united to be a single thing in the will of the lover. And therefore the lover died and lived at the same time. 197. The lover wanted to forget his beloved for just one hour, to have some rest in his sorrows. But, since oblivion and ignorance would fill him with passion, he had patience, and he exalted his intelligence and his memory to contemplate his beloved. 198. So much the lover loved his beloved, that he believed everything he told him, and so much he wished to understand him, that he wanted to understand everything he heard of him through necessary reason. And therefore the love of the lover was between belief and intelligence. 199. The lover was asked what thing was furthest from his courage; he answered it was neglect. They asked him why. He answered because the closest thing to his courage was love, which is opposite to neglect. 200. - Tell me, crazy one: do you have envy? He answered: - Yes, every time I forget the generosity and wealth of my beloved. 201. Tell me, lover: do you have wealth? - Yes: love. - Do you have poverty? - Yes: love. - Why? - Because love is not being greater than it is, and many lovers are not being enraptured by it to honor the principles of my beloved. 202. - Tell me, loving one: where is your power? He answered: - In the power of my beloved. - How do you strive against your enemies? - With the strength of my beloved. - How are you comforted? - With the eternal treasures of my beloved. 203. - Tell me, crazy one: what do you love the best, the mercy of your beloved, or the justice of your beloved? He answer that he should both fear and love justice, and that he should have no preference in his will to love anything over the justice of his beloved. 204. Fault and worth were struggling in the conscience and will of the lover; and justice and remembrance multiplied conscience; and mercy and hopefulness multiplied prosperity in the will of the beloved. And therefore worth defeated fault and wrong in the penance of the lover. 205. The lover asserted that full perfection was in his beloved, and he denied that there was any failure in his beloved. And so it was wondered which one was greatest: the assertion, or the denial. 206. An eclipse occurred in the heaven, and darkness came on the earth: thereby the lover remembered that sin had for long evicted from his will his beloved, and by this eviction darkness had exiled brightness from his understanding, which the beloved is expressed with to his lovers. 207. Love came to the lover, and the lover asked her what she wanted. And love told him she had come to him to train and feed him in such a way that, at his death, he could defeat his mortal enemies. 208. Love was ill when the lover forgot his beloved, and the lover is ill because, through intense remembrance, his beloved gives him hardship, anxiety, and sorrows. 209. The lover met a man who was dying without love. He wept for the dishonor given to the beloved in the loveless death of that man, and asked that man why he was dying without love; and he said it was because nobody had taught him about love, and nobody had fed him to be a lover. And thereby the lover sighed in his weeping and said: - Ah, devotion! When will you be greater, to make guilt lesser, and to let my beloved have many fervent, bold praisers, lovers, who do not doubt in praising his glory? 210. The lover tempted love to see if he could keep his courage without remembering his beloved; and his heart ceased to think, and his eyes ceased to cry; and love was wiped out, and the lover remained puzzled, and he asked the people if they had seen love. 211. So strongly are love, loving, lover and beloved joined together in the beloved, that they are one reality in essence, and lover and beloved are concordant in diverse things, without any opposition or diversity in essence. Whereby the beloved's kindness is above any other love. 212. - Tell me, crazy one: why do you have such great love? He replied: - Because the journey in search of my beloved is long and dangerous. In great hardship I must search for him, and I should do it swiftly. And I could not comply with all these things without great love. 213. The lover stayed awake, fasted, cried, gave charity, and went to strange lands to be able to move his will close to his beloved, and to enthuse his subjects to honor his principles. 214. If the lover's love does not reach far enough to move his beloved to mercy and forgiveness, the beloved's love will reach out to give his creatures grace and benediction. 215. - Tell me, crazy one: what can make you closest to your beloved? He answered: - Knowing to love in all my ability the ways of my beloved. 216. The lover was asked if his beloved had been failed by anything, and he said yes: by lovers, praisers, in not honoring his values. 217. The beloved hurt his lover's heart with thorns of love, to make him love the tree from which the beloved had picked the thorns he hurts his lovers with; in which tree he had suffered death, pain and dishonor to return to love the lovers he had lost. 218. The lover met his beloved, and he saw him in great nobility and power, and worthy of all honors; and he said he was shocked by the people, who loved him so little, and knew him and honored him so little. And the beloved said he had been greatly disappointed in having created man to love him, know him, and honor him, and out of one thousand men, only one hundred feared and loved him; and out of the one hundred, ninety feared him so that he would not give them pain, and ten loved him to be given glory; and there was hardly anybody who loved him for his goodness and nobility. When the lover heard these words, he cried desolately for the dishonor of his beloved, and he said: - Beloved, you who have given so much to man and have honored him so much, why have you been forgotten so much by man? 219. The lover praised his beloved, and he said he had transcended the where , since he was where the where cannot reach. And so, when the lover was asked on the whereabouts of his beloved, he answered: - He is. But it was not known where; however, he knew his beloved is in his remembrance. 220. The beloved bought with his virtues a slave man who was subjected to worries, sorrows, sighs, and plants; and he asked him what he ate and what he drank. He replied, whatever he wanted. He asked him what he wore. He said, whatever he wanted. The beloved said, - Do you have any will? He replied that a slave and subdued person has no will but to obey his master and his beloved. 221. The beloved asked his lover if he had patience. He answered that he was pleased by everything; and therefore there was nothing to be patient about; for he who is not the master of his will, cannot be impatient. 222. Love gave herself to whoever wanted her; and since many men did not want her, and the people were not greatly in love, she was free of them, hence the lover cried out for love, and love blamed his beloved. But love excused herself and said she was not against free will, because she wished great merit and glory for her lovers. 223. There was a great argument and discord between love and the lover, because the lover was tired of the hardship he endured for love. And it was argued if this was due to love's weakness, or the lover's; and they came to the judgement of the beloved, who punished the lover with distress, and rewarded him with growing love. 224. An argument took place on whether love was closer to thought or to patience. The lover solved the question, and he said that love is begotten in thoughts, and is sustained by patience. 225. The beautiful countenance of the beloved is the lover's neighbor, and the beloved's neighbors are the lover's thoughts, and the hardship and crying he endures for love. 226. The lover's will wanted to rise very highly to greatly love his beloved, and he ordered intelligence to rise up to all hispower; and intelligence ordered the same to memory. And all three rose to contemplate the beloved in his glory. 227. The lover's will left him and gave himself to the beloved; and the beloved confined the will in the lover, to be served and loved by him. 228. The lover said: - Let my beloved not be worried that I could leave him to love someone else, since love has led me to love only one beloved. The beloved said in reply: - Let my lover not be worried that I be loved and served only by him, since I have many other lovers who love me more strongly and for longer than he does. 229. The lover said to his beloved: - Kind beloved: you have trained and nourished my eyes to see, and my ears to hear, your honorings; and hence my heart is used to the thoughts by which you have accustomed my eyes to weep and my body to languish. The beloved answered the lover, and he said that without such habits and nourishments his name would not be written in the book where all who come to eternal blessing are inscribed, and whose names are deleted from the book where those who go to eternal damnation are inscribed. 230. The noble demeanours of the beloved gather in the heart of the lover, and the thoughts and the duress are multiplied in the lover, who would be finished and dead had the beloved multiplied in the lover's thoughts more of his honorings. 231. The beloved came to stay in his lover's lodging, and the lover made him a bed of thoughts; and he served him sighs and plants. And the beloved paid for his stay with remembrances. 232. Love mixed hardship and pleasure in the lover's thoughts; and pleasure complained of that mixture, and accused love to the beloved; and pleasure was finished and deleted once the beloved had put it apart from the torment that love gives to his people. 233. The signs of love that the lover makes to his beloved are: in the beginning tears, in the middle tribulations, and in the end death. And with those signs the lover preaches to the people on his beloved. 234. When the lover was isolated, his heart was accompanied by thoughts, and his eyes by tears and plants, and his body by afflictions and fasts. And when the lover went back to the company of the people, he was deserted by all the above mentioned things, and he was alone among the people. 235. Love is like the sea swirling with waves and wind, without port or shore. The lover perishes in the sea, and in his danger his pain perishes, and his wholeness is born. 236. - Tell me, fool: what is love? He answered: - Love is concordance of theory and practice for a goal, which the fulfillment of the lover's will moves towards, so that it makes people honor and serve their beloved. And one wonders if this goal is closest to the will of the lover who wants to be with the beloved. 237. The lover was asked who his beloved was. He answered it was that which made him love, desire, languish, sigh, cry, scoff, die. 238. The beloved was asked who his lover was. He answered it was the one who hesitated on nothing to honor and praise his glory, and who renounced to everything to obey his command and his advice. 239. - Tell me, fool: which is the heaviest and most severe burden, trouble for love, or trouble for enmity? He replied he should ask the men who are in penitence for either love of their beloved, or for dread of the hellish torments. 240. The lover fell asleep and love died, for it had nothing to live from. The lover woke up and love was revived in the thoughts tha the lover sent to his beloved. 241. The lover said that innate science comes from will, devotion, prayer; and acquired science comes from study, understanding. And so, it is a wonder which is the earliest science in the lover, and which is the most pleasant, and which is greatest in the lover. 242. - Tell me, fool: how do you satisfy all your needs? He replied: - With my thoughts, and by wishing, adoring, working, and with perseverance. - And where do you get all these things from? He replied: - From love - And where do you find love? - In my beloved. - And where do you find your beloved? - I find Him only in Himself. 243. - Tell me, fool: do you want to be free from everything? He answered he did, except from his beloved. - Do you want to be captive? He replied: - I do of sighs, thoughts, hardship, danger, exiles, plants, to serve my beloved, to whom these things have been created to honor his values. 244. Love tormented the lover, and he cried and moaned from the torment. His beloved called on him to come close to him to be healed. The closer the lover came to the beloved, the more he was tormented by love, since he felt greater love. And because he felt more deeply pleased as he loved more, his beloved could better heal him of his sorrows. 245. Love was sick. The lover cared for love with patience, perseverance, obedience, hope; love healed. The lover fell sick; he was healed by the beloved, who reminded him of his virtues and honorings. 246. - Tell me, fool one: what is solitude? He replied: - It is solace and company of lover and beloved. - And what is solace and company? He answered it was solitude in the courage of the lover, who thinks of nothing but his beloved. 247. A question was asked to the lover: - Where is the greatest danger: in enduring hardship for love, or in enjoying love's rewards? The lover agreed with his beloved, and said that danger in misfortune comes from impatience, and danger in prosperity comes from mindlessness. 248. Love was freed by the beloved, who gave license to the people to take from her as much as they wished; and hardly any people were found who would place love in their courage. And hence the lover cried and was sad for the dishonor for the dishonor that love is given down here among us, by false friend and mindless men. 249. Love slayed everything in the courage of his true lover, so that she could live and fit there; and the lover would have died had he not had remembrance of his beloved. 250. Two thoughts were in the lover: one meditated every day on the essence and the virtues of his beloved; and the other meditated on the deeds of his beloved. Whereby it was wondered which thought was the most brilliant, the most pleasant to the beloved and the lover. 251. The lover died by the strength of great love. He was buried in his land by the beloved, where the lover was resurrected. And it is wondered which act the lover received the greatest gift from. 252. In the jail of the beloved were misfortune, danger, sadness, dishonor, strangement, so that they would not hinder his lover from praising the beloved's honorings and from inspiring love in the men who had him in despise. 253. The lover was once in the presence of many men who had been excessively honored by his beloved, since they disgraced him in their thoughts. They despised their beloved and they scorned his servants. The lover cried, pulled his hair, beated his face and tore his clothes; and he loudly shouted: - Were such great wrongs ever done as despising my beloved? 254. - Tell me, fool one: do you want to die? He replied: - Yes, in the pleasures of this world and in the thoughts of the damned ones who omit and dishonor my beloved; in which thoughts I do not want to be understood or wanted, for my beloved is not in them. 255. - If you, crazy one, tell the truth, you will be wounded, scorned, reprimanded, tormented, and slayed by the people. He replied: - According to these words, it follows that if I told falsity, I would be praised, loved, served, honored by the people, and defended from the friends of my beloved. 256. False preachers were blaming one day the lover in the presence of his beloved. The lover had patience, and the beloved had justice, wisdom and power. And the lover preferred to be blamed and told off, than to be any of the false accusers. 257. The beloved sowed various seeds in the heart of his lover, from which the fruit alone was born, sprouted, flowered, and matured. And it is wondered if several different seeds may be born from that fruit. 258. Over love the beloved stands very highly, and under love the lover is placed very lowly. And love, who is in between, descends the beloved to the lover, and raises the lover to the beloved. And out of this descend and this rise, the love, which the lover languishes from and the beloved is served by, begins and lives. 259. On the right of love stands the beloved, and the lover is on the left; and therefore, without passing through love, the lover cannot attain his beloved. 260. And ahead of love is the beloved and behind the beloved is the lover. And this is why the lover cannot attain love until his thoughts and his wishes have passed through the beloved. 261. The beloved makes for the lover three beloved ones like himself, in honorings and in values. And the lover is equally in love with all three, even though love is only one, as in the meaning of unity, essentially one in three beloved ones. 262. The beloved clothed himself in the same dress as his lover, to be eternally his companion in glory. Hence the lover wished to dress in red every day, so that the cloth is more like that of his beloved. 263. - Tell me, fool one: what was your beloved doing before the world existed? He answered: - He must have existed owing to several properties that are eternal, personal, infinite, in which the lover and the beloved are present. 264. The lover cried and was sad to see the infidels lose their beloved in their ignorance; and he rejoiced in the justice of his beloved, who tormented those who knew him and were disobedient to him. And hence, he was asked which was the greatest one: his sadness or his rejoicing; and his fortune to see his beloved honored, or his misfortune to see him dishonored. 265. The lover gazed at his beloved in the greatest differentiation and concordance of virtues, and in the greatest opposition of virtues and vices, and in being perfection, which better suit each other without disheartening and without no-being, than with disheartening and no-being.