Dear Mienel!
With this heavenly pen I am writing you the first love letter of my journey: it will look its part! So far the trip has gone very well. I arrived in Lucerne at three o'clock, immediately took a boat (fr. 6) to Alpnach, where I landed at seven o'clock, and then at once, in the cool of the evening, started on foot to get as far as possible. A returning coachman wanted to take me to Lungern for fr. 3, but I proudly dismissed him. So, the same evening, at ten o'clock, always on foot, I reached Giswil, three and a half hours from Alpnach; there I roused the people from their sleep, after I had been very much frightened by a black monster that stood before the inn and shyly stepped aside when I took courage and walked straight up to it. I was tortured until morning wondering what kind of a monster the black creature had been, until I convinced myself the next day that it had been a black sheep. In Giswil I took neither supper nor breakfast, but had only a night's lodging (and a very good one). At half past four o'clock I left, and in the most beautiful weather I tramped across the Brünig to Brienz. In the afternoon I crossed the lake by steamboat to Interlaken and was looking forward to marching again in order to reach Lauterbrunnen, when misfortune struck me: the new boots!! My left foot is so chafed that I cannot go on with them; here I looked up a shoemaker who is putting the boots on a wide last from four o'clock in the afternoon until four o'clock in the morning, pounding and soaking them. If that does not work, I am in a bad way. Imagine my joy! Apart from this I am quite well, and must now sit in the inn to wait until the boots are softened. But I have just bought a pair of slippers which will enable me at least to walk around in the neighborhood. Otherwise it is heavenly, it was particularly marvelous yesterday evening on the lake and in the valley of Unterwalden. But I am longing now for the true Alpine air: tomorrow night I shall be on Wengern Alp (some 6,000 feet high); perhaps I shall remain there for a day.
While I was looking out of the window, I suddenly thought of—Lauchstädt, and I remembered the time, eighteen years ago, when I first met you!! You think of it too, and tell Pepsel everything that comes into your mind! In fact, you are an immensely silly woman: Why was it that when we parted, we almost started crying? Was it perhaps because eighteen years have already gone by! Now, be well and take care of yourself; and think much of your poor husband whom you proclaim to the whole world as bow-legged, and who nevertheless is already so famous that at present he only worries where to get money for the journey, which, I note, will cost not a little. But there's nothing to do about it: not every year am I thirty-nine years old.
Now I am through: I am not going to write any more with this brute of a pen! However, you must write to me nicely: if you write at once, you can send the letter to Meiringen: later on, wait to hear from me. Farewell; there you have a kiss, don't do anything foolish and keep loving
Your quite good
Husband
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 120