their eyes before it touches their lips. Do you think, perhaps, that such a thirst is the worst and most difficult to bear? Not by any means! Far worse is that endured by poor sailors under the burning sun in the torrid zone; for from above they are dried up by the burning rays of the sun, and from below the heated water throws back those rays and consumes them with heat to such an extent that they eagerly drink even tepid, foul water, swarming with worms. Severe was the thirst suffered by the inhabitants of Bethulia, when that town was besieged by Holofernes, who cut off all the water supply, so that many of the people died of thirst, as we read in the Book of Judith. Terrible indeed must have been the thirst suffered by that merchant travelling in Africa, of whom Johannes Leo writes in his description of that country; for he paid twenty thousand gold pieces for a drink of dirty water; and still worse was the thirst of Lysimachus, who bartered his crown for a glass of water. Nor is he to be accused of folly on that account, for if he had acted otherwise, he would have lost his life as well as his crown and kingdom. Now put together all the thirst, dryness, heat, and fever ever suffered by the sick; add to it the thirst of the inhabitants of Bethulia, of the Israelites in the desert, of sailors on the sea, of travellers in Africa; and all will be as nothing compared to the fearful thirst felt by even one of the reprobate in hell. Not a whole ocean of the sweetest water would suffice to quench such a thirst; an inundation of the whole world, a deluge would be far too small for the purpose. And meanwhile the damned have not even one drop of water to cool their tongues, and no other refreshment is given them but the gall of dragons and the poison of asps: “Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps which is incurable.”
Of the touch.
Finally with regard to the pain of touch, which is situated in all the senses and members of the whole body, suffice it to say that the damned live in everlasting fire, which rages both inside and outside them always. There is fire in the skin, in the flesh, in the eyes, in the ears, in the throat, in the hands and feet, in the nerves, in the marrow of the bones, in the whole body, so that it is like a glowing iron in the fire; and as we have seen already, that fire is raised miraculously above its nature, so that it tortures, not merely according to the properties of fire, but at the same time inflicts on the body all kinds of pains and torments. “In the fire alone,” says St. Jerome, “they feel every kind of