Many thanks, you dear bringer of Christmas cheer. You come like a true saviour to me, and I have placed you on my work-table, as on an altar. Thanks, a thousand thanks, to you for coming. I was very lonely.
If I had a sweetheart, I think I should never write to her, and to you also I must write little—I mean writing apart from relating external events. The events I experience within me I can write of all the less, because I could not even tell them, so necessary is it to me to feel or—to act.
I know that I shall have another letter from you soon, because you have something to relate to me; so I am proud, and rely upon it, and keep my peace, telling you thereby that I love you sincerely with all my heart.
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 141