[...] My very best thanks for your courteous and careful answer. I have since followed your advice and applied to Cotta direct. He has declined on the pretext of the fear of war. I foresaw his answer, though not perhaps the fear of war. Believe me, it is not laziness on my part if I renew my request to you to take up this business. Even the sending of the book from here, puts fatal obstacles in my way. I have not yet got my copy back from Cotta; it may have got lost and it is the last I possess.
Well then, even supposing you prefer J. Weber or some Berlin publisher, I would beg you to regard yourself as fully empowered by me to conclude this business. Consider how inexperienced I am in dealing with book-publishers. [...]
Best regards to Cecilie. Her letter was a great joy to me. It is, and remains, a serious matter that she should not once in eleven years have managed to visit her brother in exile. To hear from each other by fits and starts—every three or four years or so—is no kind of a substitute. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 467