My Child!
I am writing to you from the hotel of the Prussian Embassy, where I have found refuge with Count Pourtalès for the few weeks I have still to spend in Paris. Before my eyes is a garden with beautiful high trees and a pool with two black swans, beyond the garden the Seine, and beyond the Seine the grounds of the Tuileries, so I can breathe a little and at least am no longer in ordinary Paris.
My furniture is once again packed and warehoused at the same depot as before. [...] I want my wife to settle again in Dresden and have it all with her there. For my own part, I have given up all idea of settling down anywhere. This is the outcome of a last, hard, exceedingly wretched experience! It is not my destiny to cultivate my music in cosy domesticity. [...]
I am not going to Karlsruhe!! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 494