[...] I have now been away for 6 days: I can tell how long it has been from my purse, since each day regularly costs me a 20-franc piece. It is glorious here, and I have often thought about you in the course of my travels. Yesterday I came down from the Faulhorn (8261 feet high): there I had an awesomely sublime view of the mountain ice, the snow and the glacier world of the Bernese Alps, which seem to lie so close in front of you that you could almost reach out and touch them. - I am walking a lot, and am very good on my feet; only my head continues to be a source of dissatisfaction; my cerebral nerves are in an appalling state: overexcitement or lassitude - but no real sense of calm! I do not suppose I shall ever get much better: no treatment in the world can help where there is only one true remedy - and that is for me to be someone other than I am. The real reason for my suffering lies in my extraordinary relationship with the world and my surroundings, neither of which is capable of giving me any pleasure any longer: everything is a torture and a torment to me - a sense of inadequacy! How worthless people are, and how they have vexed me time and again in the course of this journey, amidst the wonders of nature: I am always repulsed by a sense of disgust, and yet - how I long to be with people! - But this worthless rabble! ugh!! -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 145