As to myself, I think I am fortunate to have been brought providentially under the care of Dr. Vaillant. The improvement in my health has been so great that I can now look upon the future with quite new eyes, and feel confident of being able to manage my health. I would like to see this blessing shared by everyone I love; my wife has already rejected it with scorn. [...]
[...] Don't relax your care for me for I have still a terrible amount to do on this earth before I can go to rest. Besides Tristan I have yet another subject which engrosses me, so that I should like just to gulp down all the intervening work and get on to this newest plan. It is to be called The Victors. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 1, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 308