My Dearest Friend!
The new touching evidence of your love, your sorrowful letter, was kept from me for several days by my servant: after my return from the south of France, I seemed so weakened that it was thought necessary to protect me for a number of days from any painful impressions. When I did open your letter, I saw that it contained no answer to my letter from Marseilles, but rather one to my telegram from there. I believed that this would follow immediately, and I conjectured that, since my knowledge of your letter had been delayed, a second communication might arrive almost any day. Now I am no longer on the look-out and I realize sufficiently the obligations there are to be repaid, and I must not wait for still further an accumulation of favours to tell you how much indebted I feel to your incomparably fine and sacrificing friendship!
My thanks for your report, so calm and so detailed, and for this reason, so affecting! Thanks for your zeal and affectionate concern in representing your distant friend in such a fearfully momentous act! Thanks for your delicacy in seeking to make my obligation appear so slight! Out of the fact that the departed one was closely attached to you and your family, you are making a friendly pretext for representing as a matter of affection lying quite near to you all those heavy cares endured by you out of love for your friend. — So this sad event has also served, then, to let the great beauty of your friendship dawn upon me in a fresh, truly celestial light. I recognize it fully, believe me, and hope you are assured of my most fervent return of it!
Thank my sister Luise, also, from my fullest heart: her tender letter was given to me along with yours.
Thank everyone who showed a last love and honour for my poor blessed wife.
It is impossible for me to express these thanks publicly, for I wish, as a human being, to have nothing more to do with publicity.
Your inquiries have been anticipated, I believe, in my Marseilles letter. I lay no claim to my wife's property, and for that reason I gave her the entire free disposal of it. The expenses of the burial, as well as of a gravestone and a noble memorial tablet, I am prepared to settle at any time, and I only ask for a communication of these. I am asking Natalie in particular to take care of the burial-place and to let me know the cost of this. May she also turn to me to tell me of her own circumstances, in which I declare myself gladly ready to help her to the utmost of my ability.
Would that I knew of this, to a certain degree: there is nothing to add to the business part of my communication today, before the arrival of new disclosures on your part.
In my genuine distress I am constrained, and with the most scrupulous care intent upon peace: the increase of my sorrow, undue excitement of my nervous system, compel me, especially in deference to other people, to avoid all society, since I am unable to discuss anything calmly, not even the most trifling matters, and through my uncommon irritability I only produce a disagreeable impression on others. Accordingly, I am living here, for instance, just now in the most complete retirement. Perhaps it will be my fortune, by means of a final resumption of artistic work, again to win some peace for myself.
Then — soon — to you again, truest, most noble of friends! Surely — may I soon clasp your hand once more!
Good-bye and heart-felt greetings from your
Eternally grateful
Richard Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 44