Dearest old Friend!
I expected to have some news from you, but all of a sudden you have disappeared entirely, so that I no longer have any idea where you have gone.
Certainly if anything has troubled me lately, it is that during your dear and friendly visit I couldn't feel quite as happy as I should have been at other times. You know how constantly I was held in fear of a new eruption of my awful ailment, and you even saw for yourself how justified that anxiety was. But after the enormous pleasure of your visit, I should have liked, with your help, to drive out the calf. God knows I was completely depressed and downcast that that was impossible! As soon as you had left my sickbed and I had somewhat recovered, I also started out and came here, where with the gorgeous air, the view of Mont Blanc, and under excellent medical supervision, I am undertaking a thorough cure which will delay me longer from work but promises to heal me completely from my ailment. I already feel much better and I don't contemplate any relapse into erysipelas. I hope it may never come back again!
While I am lazing about like this, half awake, I become more and more conscious of the great pleasure you gave me. My most pleasant recollections in the pursuance of my art are certainly only those in which you were so much involved; I can't think of them without thoughts of you too. Your visit has so vividly revived these recollections, that new hopes were almost reawakened which I hardly believed I still held. That you were still so vigorous, in every respect as of old, played no small part in this, and so I want to enjoy the pleasant prospect of realizing that seven years ago in Dresden we were not united for the last time in glowing enthusiasm for our art. Well, let's hope for a beautiful Wiedersehen!
Give my best greetings to Frau Pauline and to everybody who still remembers me in friendship!
And now farewell! A thousand thanks! And answer my request soon to give me news of yourself.
Your old friend
Richard Wagner
Minna is on the Seelisberg.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner: The Burrell Collection, ed. John N. Burk (Macmillan, 1950), No. 164