Dear Good Fellow,
You are really the only one with whom one can get on. Many thanks for the letter received to-day: it was the first and only one which I have received since your last, although many others were due. My last lines to you from Albisbrunn you probably received the day after you sent off the letter just to hand. I can only say, "I thank you heartily for your love."
You already know that Müller is here. Albisbrunn suits me to perfection. For the last three days my bodily health has so improved that I often feel in the highest spirits: it is the light healthy blood which is now filling my veins. Besides, fine weather has set in with the new moon. I often feel at times like these as if I were gently and pleasantly intoxicated. Oh! what is all wine intoxication compared with this feeling of most joyful ease, which often has no moral foundation. It is extraordinary how at first I was worried by theory and abstraction; it was like a disease of the brain — an eternal cross-volley of abstract thoughts on the theory of art, which I would willingly at once have communicated to you to work out, if only to be rid of them. Still I felt that I should have minutely to describe them even to you, and that would have made matters worse. Now a grey cloud seems to be passing from my brain. I have had a beneficial mucous discharge through the nose, and my senses are gradually taking pleasure in their immediate surroundings. So I think I shall soon be restored to health and happiness, and I will communicate to you another time my thoughts on art, provided indeed they are of any importance. Under these circumstances I am satisfied with my doctor; he is considerate, and takes pains to understand my constitution. Ah! were you here! When the air is clear, one is lost in wonder at the prospect. And you must really come for good and bring your children with you!
I will not write any more now. Klemenz is already waiting with the damp cloth to give me my mid-day washing.
I am bestowing the greatest attention on your notices (on all, indeed), even if I do not answer them; once more, very great and best thanks! Go on, and rest assured that you do me good through and through by your thoroughness.
Farewell; greet wife and children.
Your
Richard W.
(I have no news from Liszt.) B. has not sent anything yet to me!
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 34