[...] Well, solitary I may have been, and I have even taken up work again a little, and yet I cannot in good conscience say that all has been well with me. I feel more and more strongly that I need some pleasant feminine creature about me. One cannot live on mere defiant solitude. Where can I get what I want without stealing? Poor unhappy Frederica M[eyer] would gladly come to me, but what an abyss of difficulties and cares this would open up again! Faint-hearted and anticipating trouble in each new relationship, I have denied myself even a dog up till now. I want peace at all costs, and therefore the only thing I can do is to ward people off! You cannot believe what heart-pangs this still gives in regard to my wife! She writes very little, but when occasionally she does so she always makes me completely wretched. [...]
[...] Nothing in the world could induce me to set in motion against my wife the horrors of legal divorce. Therefore the misery goes on and I live forlorn. Believe me! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 559