[...] There is little that I can write to you from here: I lead a very melancholy existence. The vagueness of the information I was given and delays which have occurred since I arrived here mean that I have come to Paris at least four whole weeks too soon: you can imagine, as a result, my ill temper and deep sense of discontent which, I regret to say, is only made worse by continuing physical indisposition. What I am actually suffering from is Paris, which now fills my entire being with a sense of revulsion: the conflict between my inner aversion and the importunacy of a number of my friends, and especially of my good wife, may perhaps long since have prepared the ground for my present indisposition through intellectual discontent and involuntary discord. O you people! why will you never realize that the only activity which brings satisfaction and happiness and which is therefore at all useful is that which accords with our whole, true being! Paris for me means nothing but constraints and burdensome responsibility. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 100