Dear Sir,
In order to put an end to the situation that has now been going on between us for a number of years, I would suggest that you address yourself to your superiors on the Royal Court Authority and obtain their permission to remove, at least for the duration of the winter months, the sign at the entrances to the Royal Park forbidding dogs to be taken in without a lead, since the ban can only make sense during those periods when the park is being dug over and cultivated. In that way you will oblige all those people whose handsome and expensive dogs can otherwise wander freely through the town, since dogs that are kept on a lead are always bad-tempered and given to fighting with each other. The president of the council, for ex., will also find himself in this same position, since he no longer experiences any unpleasantness when meeting my dogs, now that he allows his own dog to run free.
If you do not intend to apply for the said permission, I shall do so myself, but I cannot guarantee that things will turn out exactly as you wish, since I am not prepared to put up any longer with the kind of disgraceful behaviour that I again had to suffer today at the hands of one of your employees.
I am, Sir,
your respectful and most obedient servant
Richard Wagner
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 482