My Dear Anton!
Accept my hearty congratulations on the pleasant and important occurrence in your family which you so kindly announced to me, tell your dear wife also of my sympathetic joy on this occasion, and convey, if I may ask you, my most eager felicitations to the young couple, your dear daughter Christine and her betrothed, Dr. Forster.
The fact that this event gives you such genuine pleasure, as you declare in your message, assures me of the untroubled happiness of the betrothed couple: may they look forward to an untroubled marriage!
You are right, dear much-trusted friend, in also wishing me happiness in the fresh change in my life: nothing as fine and significant as what I am experiencing has ever happened before. Fate has called to life the embodied guardian angel of my art, who has seized upon my ideal in order to have it realized with the aid of his royal design.
Everything relative to this is splendid and wonderful. I must try to endure the fact that my purely human life and course remains still exposed to great hardships and difficulties. If only the actual goal of my loftier existence will be reached!
I thank you for the satisfying news concerning my wife's state of health: may she find peace of mind and contentment!
Good-bye, my dear Anton! Be assured that with this newest occasion so kindly reported to me by you, I have again felt how dear and valuable you are to me.
As ever, I remain at heart
Your faithful friend
Richard Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 35