My Dear Friend!
Impossible to overlook you now! — Dearest friend, if you can possibly manage it, come to my Tristan. The performances are set for the 15th, 18th, and the 22nd of May. If you come, spare my wife and say nothing of it to her. I have finally come to the state where any contact with her wounds and embitters me; she is and will be the only one, truly, who will never come to understand me clearly. See, then, how you can arrange it, and — come! You will experience something of which you could never have even a notion: the performance will be simply wonderful. I invite you to stay at the Bayerischer Hof as my guest. I shall not see you a great deal — my excitement and need of sparing myself is without limit. But you will hear from me. Also you shall have my bust — in any case. Write me! Excuse my briefness! Remember me with affection! Come, and — keep silence.
Cordially
your
Richard Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 38