Saturday, March 6:
Great delight in the children, who are lively and healthy. Yesterday they were sitting opposite each other on the floor of R.’s bedroom and playing. Loldi was putting on R.’s shoe, and Eva brushing her hair with his big brush. R. says he cannot ever forget the sight.
He has good news of Kos; we shall have him back probably at Easter.
Wrote to Hermine. R. at work, but after lunch to the law courts in connection with a dispute with his locksmith. In the evening a great shock: Eva falls down in a faint. One should never rejoice; we had been too happy about the children’s good health. As I sat silent and in tears beside her little bed, forcing myself not to move so that the child would go off to sleep, I heard in little Wilhelm’s room opposite the sound of laughing, singing, and playing. In earlier days this contrast would have made me bitter, but now it gave me the consoling feeling that others at least were enjoying themselves while I was worrying myself to death.
R. came back from the courts very depressed. He never wants to get involved in a court case again: nothing but tricks, lies, evasions. His lawyer was frightened to death when he opened his mouth, for fear he would smash down the whole tissue of lies. The opposing lawyer, a profiteer, a horribly prevaricating person; R.’s defending counsel a sheep, as was to be expected. Just think, says R., throughout the world the judicial system is like that!
In the evening, dictation.