Dear Friend!
It is a long time since I visited you on your sickbed. It has not been ill will. Various matters have not left me the time. Furthermore, I've had a toothache for three days and tomorrow I'll get fixed up and my poor little wife is still suffering from eye trouble—just like a hospital! And then the weather! But patience; things will get better without the need of waiting at the Frankfurt Bundespalais without an umbrella until they come out and proclaim President Liberty—Heine's joke, not mine.
Everything is upside down, even the paper.
Well, get better, or else . . .
Sleep well.
Your
Otto Wesendonck
Saturday night
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 161