Dear honoured Friend,
'Tis time that you should have another sign of life from one upon whose life you have inscribed yourself to his lasting grateful recollection.
The fairly compact issue of my earlier operas in French translation, which I herewith send you as a friendly souvenir, offers me a most appropriate opportunity. If I add to them the cinque canti, it is chiefly for sake of spreading a little smile on the green hill.
After so long and bewildering an interruption, at last I have been so happy as to resume the completion of my Nibelungen pieces, and positively have just ended the third act of Siegfried. That I have found myself still possessed of the faculty, has filled me with great confidence in my further productivity, and consequently imbued me with the wish for a calm old age. I hope that the resolutions which I have taken will tend to fulfil that wish; in any case it means entire abstention from the excitements and annoyances which the performance of my works has hitherto provided me. Should you wish to hear and see our Rheingold — which now seems pretty definitely settled for the end of this month at Munich — you would not find myself there. Despite the fact that these performances will take place in quite another fashion than what I anticipated until a little while ago, I could not prevent the King of Bavaria, to whom I am so uncommonly indebted for the artist-quiet of my life, from having the things set before him. For that matter, everything is being done according to my instructions; the singers, conductors, painters and machinists, have all had to come to me, and take their orders from me; but to throw myself upon the spot into all the often odious agitation, now too well known to me, I most emphatically declined. Therefore, should you wish to attend the Rheingold, I believe you will really witness something quite respectable; nothing has been spared, to comply with all my technical requirements; that my singers are not precisely gods, you will probably perceive, even without my drawing your attention to their humannesses.
Begging you to remember me most cordially to your dear honoured wife, I remain with ever grateful and truly friendly memory
Yours sincerely
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to Wesendonck et al., trans. and indexed by William Ashton Ellis (Grant Richards, 1899), No. 43