[...] Liszt's Orpheus deeply interested me; it is one of the most beautiful, most perfect, nay, most incomparable tone-poems: the enjoyment of this work to me was great. The public liked his Préludes better, which had to be repeated. Liszt was made very happy by my unfeigned recognition of his works, and touchingly expressed his joy thereat.
The Eroica was small delight to me: in my indicible exertions to drive a tired-out orchestra to the height I wanted, my own pleasure in the thing was done for. To tell the truth, I no longer have a fancy for conducting Beethovenian Symphonies: I have drained them to their last drop. — To tell you something good again, after my painfully prolonged stay at St. Gallen, and after safely getting through a public dinner (which was meant well, for that matter, and at which I was made so much of, that — against my previous obstinate resistance — I myself at last was brought to speech), last Thursday evening I returned to my domestic rest (?), and to this day have not since left the house. To-morrow I think of resuming my broken work with a will!
As result of this latest visit of Liszt's, I may tell you that my friendship for him has been materially strengthened. The charming candour with which he finally owned that he had much needed me, to get initiated into the actual depths of my work, agreeably dispelled all the misgivings roused in me by several symptoms of a superficial reading, so that I was able satisfactorily to answer for myself the question how that superficiality had been possible.
For the rest, my intercourse with the two ladies, and particularly with the Princess, has made a favourable impression on me after all; in view of the Princess's great kind-heartedness, I have been led to greater gentleness and government of my so very excitable temper, so that I now return to my solitude as from a school, with the feeling of having learnt something. And how much should I not have yet to learn, to conform a little to the claims I make upon myself after close introspection, and to shew myself worthy before myself of what I hold for good and noble in this life of grief and weakness? Never has it become clearer to me than now, what indulgence is needed by the very best of us, and how he, of all others, has to practise the highest goodness, not to become the greatest wretch!
Now please fulfil our joint petition for news of yourself and your dear wife's health. With a hearty farewell I wish you all the best!
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 13