Dear Uhlig,
That the thicker letter comes as an enclosure, you must attribute to the fact that I do not exactly know K.'s address.
From this letter you will get an idea of my health. Splendid — feeble, full of pain, and unable to sleep! Think to what a point I have come. Last night a wretched joke on your Christian name came into my head (Louisd'or instead of Theod'or), and, like a ghost, it scared away all possibility of sleep from me. I cannot yet write you a letter, but I expect news from you daily. I am also expecting my book. Here I have been able to do nothing but move out of one dwelling into another. I have met Semper. No money order from Wigand as yet. To the March number of the Deutsche Monatsschrift (Stuttgart) I have promised to contribute an article, "Art and Climate." The good friend in the Allgemeine Zeitung has determined me to expose the lazy, cowardly, preposterous objection of "climate" in all its emptiness. In any case, I am resolved to publish Papers for Art and Life entirely on my own account; perhaps fortnightly. If the Art-work of the Future attracts any notice, I shall hope to win Wigand for my undertaking. Tell me what you think of him, and of the matter itself.
I have made a mistake in the Wibelungen; not, however, in the title, but in publishing it in pamphlet form: it ought to have come out in a monthly journal: make my excuses to Wigand on that account, and salute him.
I have not written to the King, and yet there appears to me some truth in the report. At the beginning of June last year Semper told me in Paris that Heubner was condemned to death, and that the execution would soon be carried out. That made my heart jump to my mouth. From the country I wrote at once to F. v. L. (naturally without saying a word about myself), telling her to go to the King and caution him against carrying out the sentence (in case it had really been pronounced). I spoke in praise of Heubner, and explained how the King would not only have done better if — as he first intended — he had called him to the Ministry; but that now he could not do better than learn to know Heubner and make a friend of him. Naturally L. did nothing, as the whole thing was only a rumour; but now, sentence having really been passed, she has probably come forward with a letter. So what has come to your ears may quiet you. But now I intend to write to my three friends at the Königstein, and shall forward the letter to the commander of the fortress for inspection. I have at heart to send an energetic brotherly greeting to them. Your last letter I have already read twice through here in Paris: we have no further details from Dresden.
Farewell, my faithful, dear brother! Soon more from
Your
Richard W.
Salute Heine. I shall write to him shortly.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 8