My Dear Beloved Friend,
I have no words with which to thank you for the love which you and your wife showed my dear Anton during his life and during his suffering, and for the faithful sympathy which you have shown me and my children at his departure; only let me press your hand in spirit. Oh! what have I, and we all, lost in him, with what great love did he cling to his family, his German fatherland, his friends, particularly you who meant more to him than everything else; for your friendship was in every respect a blessing to him. In the greatest strain of his difficult profession, your glorious creations always lifted him up again and gave him fresh strength and energy for continuing his wearisome daily work. Even two days before his death, he had Karl and Josephine play to him Wolfram's Cavatina and the Song to the Evening Star. With tears in his eyes and with his beloved but now very weak voice, he expressed his great joy in this and cried out: "My Richard, oh my Richard, how you have had to fight, how you have been misjudged — only the next centuries will know how to value you! And you were my friend!" — How greatly he endured his suffering and with what patience bore his infirmity, which scarcely can be described, how he sought to make the separation easy for us which for him became so terribly oppressive — for, like his whole life, his death was also one only of love and self-abnegation! His spirit lives in us: and to live on in this spirit shall be our whole aspiration. Although the most beautiful part of my life is now ended for me, I look back with gratitude to a period whose brightest point was the beautiful years which we passed in the stimulating intercourse with you which made my dear husband so happy. — May you and your honoured wife accept the most cordial greetings from me and my family, and be assured of the constant gratitude of
Your
Bertha Pusinelli
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 97