Now do say, my dear old friend and brother, whatever can be amiss between us. I was surprised enough to have received no news from you for so long, but now I am suddenly horrified by receiving a letter from Dresden, in which, among other things, I am informed that, some one having asked you for my news, you answered that I (and Heine) did not concern you any more! Now, for Heaven's sake, tell me whether anything has again happened? Since our last rencontre we had — I thought — got on very well? You had written your opinion, I mine, and everything was quite in order! Have you meanwhile had a quarrel with Heine, in which I also am concerned? If this should be serious, it would indeed be sad! But it is now some time since I heard from either of you. So please say what is up? You cannot expect me to rest quiet in such a state of matters? Or how were it possible that in your old age you should all at once bear me a serious grudge? I cannot possibly bear you one!
So write to me at once! Or else can I no longer hang my opera-concerns about your neck. If you are unwilling to have anything more to do with me, I cannot at least remain any longer a burden to you, and some one else must attend to the business matters.
But is it then really so serious?? I cannot believe it! Certainly some bee has again got into your bonnet: how often has each of us spied out such an insect before! Put me at ease at once, and leave me no longer in this uncertainty.
Hearty greetings from Minna. Your picture is well preserved, and you look down from it far too good-naturedly for me to believe that, blind with rage, and roaring like the lion from the Midsummer Night's Dream, you would tear to pieces my portrait, which I now enclose.
Farewell, and set things straight!
Your
Richard Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 116