Children, what a magnificent portfolio you have sent me: it's quite impossible to put the ill-bred Siegfried in it! God knows what I must save it for. It would have been nicer, however, if you had bestowed yourselves on us for Christmas: on that point, alas! you are utterly dumb, and the handsome present has almost made me mournful, as it seemed to tell me you would stop away a long time yet. May I be mistaken! Or do you mean as good Prussians to leave us in the lurch in the coming calamity of war? That would not be handsome!
For my part, I am left enough already; I fear that everything will leave me soon, even my relish for work. I can no longer attune myself to Siegfried, and my musical feeling already wanders far beyond it, away to where my mood fits in: to the realm of sadness. Everything appears to me right stale and superficial! Of our "loneliness" now you can form no idea, and my health, too, is dull and leaden. Perhaps — as a political exile — I shall soon have to depart from here, apparently for France, unless the Grand Duke of Weimar comes to my aid before. Yet that really doesn't much concern me!
My hearty thanks for the precious gift, and particularly for the continued love and sympathy which you bestow on me.
In perpetual devotion,
Your
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 15