[...] I am in too soft a mood now for harsh and bitter reproaches about your last letter, but it is sad that your remembered image of me is such that you can so misunderstand me and my letters. You must have formed a fine opinion of me, that you can subject every word of mine to unjust criticism. Not only do I divine hardness, perversity and arrogance, but I hold you for a fool. I do not exactly remember now what I wrote—I only know that I must lower my tone now and walk cautiously, since I have found in you a severe critic who will make not even the slightest allowance for my mood! Pardon me if I don't defend myself en détail since I cannot feel able to reproach myself en gros. Your doctrinaire mood intimidates me too much altogether. Your letters indeed are only relative, since they are merely criticisms of mine, but I will nevertheless give you something positive.
Minna set off to Berlin early yesterday, and I cannot tell you how I feel. This is not being "in love," it must be love. She has gone there to act at another theatre for a time—perhaps she will stay there as she has come much into collision with a Mme. Grabowsky here. As for me—my God, my God, if I wanted to be "modern" this is just the moment for a separation, but there it is—my heart is broken, in regular bourgeois fashion, broken. Kindly imagine the rest for yourself—sometime we can talk about it. I wish I had a friend with me now—and I have absolutely no one but you—and you, too, my Brutus?! Theodore, I am getting sentimental and can get no farther to-day! My little Magdeburg room? Well, well, "Pardon me the rest, my Prince" (he stops and his eyes fill with tears). The Prince: "Ass, why do you weep?" (exeunt both). Humour, humour, old fellow!
You haven't sent the money either—why do you force me to the humiliation of dunning you for what you do not owe me? You promised me something for the first of November and I calculated accordingly. Isn't it possible for you? It is really too naif—at one and the same time I weep for a mistress and dun a friend upon whom I have no claim! Oh, Theodore, Theodore! More soon from your dead friend,
Herr Richard Wagner.
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 27