[...] Karl [Ritter] has just come to pay an evening visit. He is very attached to me now and I have become equally fond of him. My object now is to help him on with his work. Liszt wants him to write an opera soon. I am egging him on too and I think it will come off. Anyhow he has it in him to do it. For the rest I am as well known here as a spotted dog, chiefly because of my grey fur cap. People nudge one another and point at me. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 386