[...] Hearty thanks for your friendship! With this letter I am also dispatching a petition to the Königsberg courts for divorce from my wife. I am now destitute. I must get the Riga post. I cannot get away from here at the moment. I am staying with my brother-in-law Hermann Brockhaus, Ottilie's husband. Good folk. I cannot leave them at once. Let me know by return of post if my presence in Berlin is immediately necessary, because if you could get the contract without that I should much prefer it. I haven't a penny at the moment and my affairs can't be put in order forthwith. In spite of that I shall in any case see something of you for a time in Berlin—only somewhat later. [...] This letter for Holtei. No more concealment. Many and warm thanks, my dear Louis! Adieu!! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 41