[...] My first Italian conversation was a delightful affair: try as I might, I could not remember the Italian for milk, since it is a well-known fact that this word never appears in any of the Italian operas from which I draw my knowledge of the language. But you soon couldn’t have told me apart from Vestri, and you’ll have a clear picture of me if you imagine this hot-blooded son of the south. - I drove back that same evening by coach from Domodossola to Baveno on Lago Maggiore: this journey crowned the whole day; I felt blissfully happy returning from the wilds to such a charming spot. Unfortunately, the very next day this peaceful mood of mine was shattered by the rabble of humanity: on board the steamer - full of Italian philistines, though no worse for that - poor creatures, chickens and ducks (which were being transported) were so abjectly tormented and left to starve in such terrible fashion that I was once again filled with a sense of raging fury at the appalling insensitivity of those people who countenanced such a sight. To think that one would only be ridiculed if one tried to intervene!! - In general, my dear friend, my views on the human race are growing increasingly gloomy: on the whole I cannot help feeling that this race of ours has no alternative but to perish utterly. -
[...]
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 146