How goes it with you, dear Friend? I know to what great cares you are exposed at present, and cannot think of you without anxiety, especially when I hear nothing from you. Let me have some news soon!
I now am passing through a most depressing time: my heart is so full of bitterness, that there's scarcely room for care itself. My whole life and work to me seem quite in vain and useless, and I appear to have spent too much earnestness on what the world, after all, but deems a game. In this time of trial, when each resolve is made impossible to me, whilst I am incapable of any mental activity, everything combines to give me still more pain! The day before yesterday the dear good little dog you once sent to my house died suddenly, and in an almost inexplicable fashion. I had become so used to the gentle creature, and the manner of its death, everything — has made me very sad. I know that you will not allow of attachment to dumb animals; but for a man like myself — and particularly in present circumstances — you will understand that this loss has been peculiarly keen.
If I were only out of this Paris, where I experience nothing but misfortune! Towards the middle of next month I must try to manage it by force. How, where else? Ah God, all is so highly indifferent to me. I have no roots anywhere, and each feeling of home becomes more and more foreign to me! — How wrong it is of me, to bring my cries to you! Unfortunately I can bring forth nothing else, if I am to talk about myself. Nor did I want to do that, either, but only to know for certain how it goes with you. I know what cares are weighing on you, and, with my bent to sad forebodings, I fall on gloomy thoughts about them when I hear nothing; for believe me that, if I have any feeling left of home, it goes out to where I felt myself in such safe keeping.
So — nothing in answer to these lines, save the news of your welfare! For that I beg you!
With heartiest greetings to your dear wife,
Your faithfully devoted,
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 33