Monday, April 19:
Still mainly the children; R. does some work, although he is unwell. No letters, a Paris newspaper with a caricature and a very enthusiastic article. R. goes out in very bad weather and returns very unwell. He goes to bed early and is much run down. I write to Claire.
I read to the children about the way in which various birds build their nests, and I told R. about this. He observed: If a human being were to act with the certainty of truth and to look neither to the right nor to the left, no one could really do anything to him, and he would be as safe from other men as the bird’s nest from the most violent gale.
Christ’s words — “Fear not, for the Father, who clothes the lilies, who protects the sparrows on the roof, for whom the very hairs of your head are numbered, will also care for you” — are difficult to understand, R. said, but of profound truth; the human being who truly lives for his own calling alone has nothing to fear. This vision of an inwardly secure being has been perpetuated for mankind in the legend of Siegfried and the fairy tale of Tom Thumb.
Today, as I was searching for a book in the library, R. came into the next room and I heard him say to himself, “It is absolutely splendid.” Later I asked him what was absolutely splendid. He said it was the sound of the children romping above, which he had just heard.