Dear Ernst Benedikt!
Many strange things have happened to me: when I expected to receive the money for my intended trip to Greece I received instead a message which brought the confusion around me to a head, but which above all made it impossible for me to carry out my project. Be satisfied then to hear the result of all this confusion without wanting to investigate its particulars. This result is as follows:
To my joy I have arrived at the conviction that my wife's love for me is stronger and more definite than her error about me: that as a consequence it is not the separation but a renewed and continued life together that is capable of healing the discord which had arisen between us. I therefore consider—together with Minna—that what has happened is beneficial, in that it has shown us both what we are and can be to each other now. Four days ago I came to Zürich with Karl Ritter (without horsetail and turban!). Tell this to my friends in Paris—
I've told my wife that I received the news of her trip to Paris as early as the beginning of May, and from none other than you—who, in your anxiety, had taken a chance and written letters to me general delivery in half a dozen cities, one of which did reach me in Geneva half by accident. I don't want to keep it a secret any more that I knew about her trip to Paris—for that really did move and affect me very much.
Now see to it that you soon get chased out of Paris, so that there'll be nothing left for you to do but to come to us. I wish the same thing for Anders. To Semper I'll write shortly. The whole Ritter family is coming to us next spring in order to buy a house here and start a colony with us and any one else who is ready for it.
From Minna I hear many good things about you: accept my warm thanks for that! Farewell, greet everybody for me and write soon again!
Your
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 97