[...] I will write to Moudon about Natalie. On the whole I am bound to agree with you; nevertheless the plan has many drawbacks. I am afraid Natalie is too old now for this project. One does not begin to go to school at her age, and that is what it comes to. What a terrible pity it is! Childless as we are, she should be just the person to look after you, keep you company, look after the house, etc. It would be the very best thing for her and for you! Yet I am bound to see that you have reason to doubt her suitability afresh; I—have nothing to advance to the contrary, and must think you right to avoid further unfriendly relations. So, if you have been otherwise satisfied with her of late and she has been useful to you, I will gladly show her my gratitude and—although I still cannot hope for very much from it—I am willing to do what I can to forward her wish to train herself for teaching, late as it is. [...]
It is really the most—singular thing that I am told again and again of the King's remark that he cannot pardon me if I do not present myself. As if I had not explained most definitely to the Minister—as formerly to Lüttichau—how impracticable, impossible and inadvisable it would be to expect me after fully ten years to undergo examination about matters, which are only faint shadows now in my memory, and of which I could, in many instances, only give a very misty account with the best will in the world. Silence is naturally the only possible answer to such a proposition. One might as well speak to the wind; they simply come back and back to the same old phrase. I don't know how to deal with such people. Besides, their whole behaviour to me is so humiliating that all I ask is to be excused from further dealings with them. Many have had to repent of their stubbornness recently and others' turn may yet come. If I cannot improve my position in spite of these smallminded gentry, I suppose I shall just have to submit to it, and can safely leave my fate to the judgment of posterity. Best of all, my spirit is not broken yet, and a very little encouragement can revitalise me, ever and again. Under pressure of the most untoward and forlorn circumstances, I have finished another new work which will bring me honour and renown. I have already two more works in my head—apart from the Nibelungs—and if I spoke of a break in my work for the present, it arises not for lack of matter but because I do not want to overdo myself and I need recreation, not inspiration. Between now and November I could quite well complete the last act of Siegfried, and that would be the fourth big work polished off within six years. Anyone comparing my present works with those of others, will be bound to confess that such mental productivity is almost incomprehensible.—Thus equipped, then, I can mock my fate and be content to leave the King of Saxony to think what he likes of me! It will do me no harm. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 419