No! I will not let the year depart without taking farewell of such a friend and without exchanging salutations!
You have deeply revived me with your letter, my good Anton! — Let me thank you! — In this world I am finally living only as though on some island in the air, peopled by those unbelievably few ones who belong to me and to whom I belong. What a reward it seems to me, that those difficult seven Dresden years live on in one person who is dear to me: that one is you — alone!
Here I have formed a little colony about me out of three families established through me: with these I am staying now, in order to have a certain amount of intercourse with human beings. — I shall certainly come to Dresden for The Mastersingers: then I shall stay only with you! — Here you have a Richard W. in much better health. — Greetings and blessings!
Your
Old Friend
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 50