Dear Friend,
Your letter has brought vividly to mind the old days. There was a peculiar "something" about that time when we were together. I, too, long to be with you once again. Tell me, could not we tryst your brother here on the Rhine when he has his holidays, and all be merry together like boys for a week? Here we should be perfectly undisturbed, which, so far as I am concerned at least, would not be so easy elsewhere. I hope, towards the end of May, to pass through Weimar, and to spend a day with you. When the time approaches let me know where you will be. But if you feel inclined to visit me first for a couple of days, do come; it so happens that I am in a position at present to pay your travelling expenses.
In summer (June and July) the Bülows are coming here.
Such things are the only joy in life, and I would give all the world to be able always to have a friend staying with me. If one lives near each other all one's life in a large place, it does not come to the same thing: one can never thoroughly enjoy one's friends by seeing them in snatches. Therefore, decide quickly. I had rather not come to Weimar to see you.
Farewell. Be wise, and come.
Yours,
W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to August Roeckel, trans. Eleanor C. Sellar, with an introductory essay by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (J. W. Arrowsmith, 1897), No. 10