Dear Friend!
Thanks for your interposition, which has made it possible for me to take refuge for the present in the friendly place whence I write to you to-day. [...]
In close intercourse with a dear friend here, Alexander Müller, your friend too, I hope to get the peace and collectedness necessary to finish my work in preparation for Paris. As to Rienzi and the wishes you urge upon us as regards that opera, Belloni [...] will inform you more fully. He thinks it impossible to bring it on at the Grand Opera, especially as a beginning. I [...] have no heart for a reconstruction of the work, which I have long outgrown and have already had to alter repeatedly on account of its inordinate dimensions. I simply have not the heart for it and would prefer with all my soul soon to make something new. [...]
I have arrived at a complete understanding with Gustave Vaez about the externals of our common undertaking. The work I am about to do here will shortly reveal fully to him—and to you—my inner view of the matter. God grant we may understand each other even here, or at least be able to come to an understanding. It is only from deep conviction involving my whole inner life that I can draw the inspiration and courage necessary for my art, for it is only in this conviction that I can love it. If this conviction were to separate me from my friends—well, I would bid farewell to art too—and turn peasant, perhaps!
From the news I get I cannot help seeing that I am held in high esteem by you over there! I hear that I was even accused the other day of having conspired with someone else to set fire to the old Dresden Opera House. Well, never mind! My good wife is living in the midst of this cesspool of bourgeois goodness and magnanimity. I have given up trying to persuade her to come to me by words, as I feel sure only facts could convince her. [...] But one thing troubles me very much, it wounds me to the heart, and that is the charge so often brought against me of ingratitude to the King of Saxony. After all, I am very much a man of feeling and so have found it hard to understand why, in face of this change, I should have suffered one single twinge of conscience for this alleged ingratitude. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 155