[...] My health is still not of the best: I’m at present suffering a particularly bad attack of piles; my bowels are in ruins, & the result is a permanent feeling of nausea & a rush of blood to my head. I intend undergoing a thorough course of treatment next spring & hope then to be rid once & for all of this tiresome affliction. - As to my lodgings, the earlier problems have now been overcome: we have moved into an extremely attractive & spacious flat in the Ostra-Allee, & have furnished it as tastefully & as well as we could. Although I have, to a certain extent, committed all the revenue from my operas over the next few years to furnishing the flat (an income which of course will continue to increase), my salary is sufficient to enable us to live comfortably during that time; certainly, everything I have acquired is to last the rest of our lives. Ah! how happy that thought makes me! You can readily imagine what my poor & sorely tried wife thinks of all this! And you can equally well imagine how happy I am to be able to offer Minna this permanent reparation! - [...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 61