My poor, dear wife,
Not until yesterday evening did Karl arrive here, bringing your letter with him. Now that I have read it, I scarcely need assure you that I shall return home in any case, and certainly during the next few days: I can add nothing to this assurance except to say that already in early May, when news reached me in Geneva of your journey to Paris and of your attempts to seek me out, I would not have concealed myself from you but would have given you an opportunity to speak to me if at that precise moment - and not until that precise moment - I had not had to take account of another person, so that it was quite impossible for me to act as openly during that period as would otherwise have been desirable, or to follow the dictates of a heart which was deeply concerned for your own well-being. The moment that various indications had driven me to suppose that you had received a thoroughly distorted account of all that had happened during recent weeks, the only thing that mattered to me was to explain to you the true course of events, less for the sake of my own self-justification than to spare you the deep offence and mortification to which you must have been subjected as a result of that monstrously inaccurate report. In order to be informed as to its precise details, I sent Karl to Zurich. From your letter I now see that my fears were well grounded, and, even worse, that you have given credence to the most stupid distortions of the truth on the part of a mother who was concerned only for questions of superficial decorum, and of a vindictive but cowardly husband, and that you thus condemned me as wholly guilty, and yet had no more ardent wish than that I should return to you, since - separated from me - you felt the only prospect ahead of you was death. If I am now clear in my own mind that you have been labouring under every kind of the most grievous error concerning not only this one specific point but concerning me in general, I see at the same time that your love for me is stronger and more powerful than all your error, - and this alone is sufficient to leave me in no doubt as to what I must now do. I have never said that I no longer loved you, - and now I know that all that remains is for me to return to you. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 111