[...] What is Joachim doing, the "Chosen One" of Schumann? You ought to have come to Paris too. The experiences of that time have exalted me very much, and the child [Princess Marie von Wittgenstein] has become something high and holy to me. I and my composition live under her blessing now; I have never yet felt so well in music-making and this month I almost finished the first half of The Rhinegold, though unfortunately I was hindered by an illness, a violent cold and fever with its consequences. [...] I am completely at sea about Karl [Ritter]. Each time I give him a rough or vigorous answer, I soon regret it heartily; but when I have almost come to the point of asking pardon, I always get something from him that turns me right round and makes me answer in the very tone I have just been sorry for, feeling that I had not handled him aright that way. The silly fellow never sees that if one of us is to be intensely irritable, it should certainly be I rather than he, by virtue of a thousand experiences and impressions. He pays me back for the expression of such wounded and tender susceptibilities by much greater irritability, and in this he is encouraged by his view of our relationship, for he regards himself as entirely on an equality with me. As regards this open claim to equality on his part, I fully assent to it as regards capacity and the like,—indeed I would gladly put him high above me in these matters—but when he overlooks the vast and painfully acquired wealth of actual experience that necessarily gives infinitely greater weight to me than to him, it is bound in time to lead to ever-increasing error in all his dealings with me, even to the point of total misunderstanding of everything I say. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 250