“When death stretches out its hand and slaps you violently, no more than a day and a night will pass before you feel the touch of the fingers of life, and you will smile and rejoice. Fate may come to you in a moment of heedlessness and stare at you with great and terrifying eyes, seize your neck in a grip of iron, throw you violently to the ground, trample you beneath its iron feet, and go away laughing. But soon it returns to you repentant, seeking forgiveness, gathering you up with silken hands, singing to you a hymn of hope, and filling you with song.

“Many afflictions and agonizing hardships may come to you, but the phantoms of the night will melt away with the coming of the morn, and you will feel your resolve clinging to your hopes. But if your portion of existence is a bird that you love, if you feed it with the grains of your heart, give it to drink from the light of your eyes, make your ribs to be its cage and your inner being its nest—then, if while you are looking at your bird and bathing its feathers with the rays of your soul, it flees from you and flies away circling above the clouds, if it then descends into another nest and there is no way to make it return. . . what then, sir, would you do? Tell me what you would do and where you would find patience and consolation, how you would revive your hopes and aspirations?”