[...] With you a particular guilt must always attach to a particular person; you take no account of Fate and the nature of things, but simply imagine that if this or that person had not existed everything would have been different. I can say no more to you on this subject; others will do so sometime and Heaven grant you find the right person to enlighten you. It is repugnant to me to renew the attempt and I will only say once more most definitely that nothing drove me to give up our Zurich home except the recognised impossibility of living on in such close proximity to our neighbours there. Things could be asked of the husband by the wife which you and I could no longer ask of him. We could get along while, according to certain well-understood requirements of propriety, silence reigned between all four of us, but as soon as it came to speech between the four of us we could do so no longer. He accepted the announcement of my removal in the most friendly and gracious way—but he did accept it and moreover I was under obligation to go as all other ways to a good understanding became more and more difficult.—But enough! and indeed, too much! You will, I fear, brood over this again and fail to see the thing aright. [...]
What Tichatschek may have taken into his head when I wrote to him that we were leaving Zurich, packing up, and selling certain trifles, is more than I can understand. He has written to me too about the pictures and the Erard. Do you think he is not quite all there? I shall reply to him as soon as I get his report on Rienzi. Naturally you will take no notice of this absurd interrogatory. I simply wish that our departure from Zurich should not look like a break-up, but like a removal with all our things kept together. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 364