Dear Sir,
If I make so bold as to importune you with these lines, then I must begin by appealing to the great kindness which you showed me during your last brief visit to Paris, in the late autumn of last year, when Herr Schlesinger introduced me to you in passing. There is, however, a further circumstance which encourages me to take this present step of mine: my friend, the writer Heinrich Laube, wrote to me last summer from Carlsbad to tell me that he had there made the acquaintance of one of your countrymen who had boasted of being your friend; - he had spoken to this gentleman about me & my plans, & enlisted his sympathies to the extent that he had, of his own accord, promised to recommend me to you, since he was on the point of travelling to another watering-place, where he was certain of meeting you.
You see, dear Sir, on what remote & uncertain connections I see myself forced to pin my most sanguine hopes; you see how anxiously I chase after feeble possibilities in the hope of encountering some stroke of inestimable good fortune. - Could - or might - that promise be fulfilled? - My permanently unlucky star almost forbids me from believing it. But I owed it to myself to ask the question, & I would initially beg for but a single sign: Yes! or No!
In deepest admiration
Your
most obedient servant
Richard Wagner,
25, Rue du Helder.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 34