[...] Yesterday, too, I dispatched an important letter to Dresden—my last attempt to discover what I may expect from there. After mature consideration, however, I have not addressed this question to the Minister of Justice [...] but looked round for some influential, highly placed personage, who has easy access to the King and is himself approachable for discussion. So I hit on my old friend Lüttichau, who, after all, is the most closely connected with me of all those folk and to whom, moreover, in the event of things going well, I can make a sound offer for the settlement of that advance from the Pension Fund which I left unrepaid. I believe this was the best thing to do. [...]
I have no further special incidents to relate, except that they mean to give my operas in Moscow. [...] Bülow writes from Berlin telling me of Hülsen's comical fury over "the impertinent success"—as he is reported to have called it—of Lohengrin, because it is asked for more often than he is able to give it. He would never have expected such a thing. Johanna is getting married shortly and what is he to do? Every seat is booked for six performances ahead and there are constant fresh orders—it is really quite funny. Probably Mme. Tuczek will then have to take Ortrud. [...]
Liszt certainly seems to be profoundly depressed just now and I can see that it is not the vulgarities of Jew journalists [...] nor the insignificant happenings at the theatre, etc., that are to blame for it, but experience of the bare-faced ingratitude, disloyalty and treachery of people to whom he has shown nothing but kindness. It is plain that the man is too noble and imposing a figure for all these little German backwaters. In France they would know how to honour and value a man like that—so good-hearted, so zealous for others and so eminently able. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 394