Dear Old Fellow!
You will shortly receive, through Michaelson of Berlin, an order from Cologne for Tannhäuser, with postal certificate for twelve louis d'or. I hope this will not embarrass you. For the rest, you can always send him scores, if he enclose you a postal receipt for at least nine louis d'or. (He holds out a prospect of Magdeburg and Reval.) I have just written to Wurda, at Hamburg, and sent him a form of order on you, with the stipulation that a postal receipt for fifty louis d'or be added. So get into harness, and let my friend Mehner set to his copying.
I have just had a wild week's revel with Liszt. On Wednesday there will be a great torchlight procession with music and song, for the presentation of various honorary diplomas.
At Wiesbaden Lohengrin went very well.
Kind greetings to Heine! How are his eyes? Is he working at Lohengrin? It would be a good job if it were finished. But he must not injure himself on that account. Good-bye!
Your reformed rake,
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 120