Praise be to God, my dear wife! I feel a new man thanks to a decision I finally took after three of the most agonizing days! I have found myself once again, & now know the means of my salvation. Listen, my own dear wife! I hope we shall be together again within 2 weeks at the latest & I shall not be so easily separated from you in the future. Does that shock you? Well, examine the facts & you will find that I am not acting overhastily, but that my plan is the most natural & most sensible I could have thought of, when I considered the facts more closely & looked calmly, & without exaggeration, into the future. I beg you to listen & to help me with all the love you are capable of feeling for me.
I cannot remain here in Paris any longer: there is nothing else I can be doing here for the time being. I have made a few necessary contacts, notably with a poet, together with whom - albeit at a distance - I can attend to my opera text for Paris. Everything else lies in the distant future, & there is absolutely nothing that can be done here now before next winter: Paris is deserted, notably as a result of the cholera. I have given you only a brief indication of the appalling sense of disgust I feel at this whole Paris business, so as to make it clear that there is no way I could be induced to remain in this ghastly, noisy, expensive & vast prison unless I had a particular purpose in mind. That purpose has now been achieved: there is nothing else that can be done for at least 6 months: so I shall quit Paris & its suffocating atmosphere. Shall I go now to London? I have made detailed enquiries and discovered that if I do not mind spending a small fortune with as little likelihood of accomplishing anything there as I have in Paris, then I can certainly go to London, but otherwise there is no reason for me to do so. The season there is already half finished: all the musicians of Europe have been flocking there, offering themselves like stale beer without accomplishing anything: but there is absolutely no English Opera there at present, only an inferior German one which would be of no use to me whatsoever. I have convinced myself that for London, too, I must make plans well in advance: that is something I can equally well do from a distance, and it will not be possible for me to achieve my goal there until the summer of next year: should I now squander 100 thalers in pursuit of that aim? No, I shall take what steps are necessary without going to London, - that is sensible! - What shall I do now? - My dearest thought & wish in all the world is to be reunited with my dear wife for good & to set up house with her in one of the most splendid spots on earth! - Listen carefully: I cannot at present return to Weimar as we discussed; but what I can offer you is a place where you can recover your health of body & mind, & that place is the splendid town of Zurich in Switzerland. A highly agreeable friendly well-to-do town, in a location such as scarcely any other city can boast: we shall live there in a simple little house just outside the town on Lake Zurich, with a view of the snow-covered Alps. What you need is not Teplitz but the lake baths at Zurich, they are the healthiest in the world & will strengthen & invigorate you, restore your energy & revive your spirits. There in the German-speaking part of Switzerland we shall feel at home: I have a dear friend there, & he & his family & friends are all completely devoted to me; they will gladly serve me in whatever ways they can, simply to have me there in their midst, so that I can write my works there. Then - you see, my dear Minna! if I then have you beside me, with Nette, Peps & Papo! - then I shall finally pursue my true calling once more, & write an opera. I feel a great urge to write a new work, but my mind must first be calmer, & that will only happen when I am near you!
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 91