[...] I am well assured of your love and friendship for me and am happy to be able to return them in full, so that I should be for ever inconsolable, if a single day, hour or moment in which I failed to get the better of a morbid resentment should cause me to be guilty of an injustice towards you for which I could never make amends.
But I am in an excited frame of mind, after an interview with Rebel, the dealer, on the subject of the re-purchase of my furniture, etc., and, therefore, just to-day, I could not be sure that I should express myself with restraint.
So I exclude the possibility of giving offence by prevailing upon myself not to see you on this present visit to Vienna. Do not misunderstand me, my dear friend. My lot is now changing for the better, and all the evil consequences of the past will be utterly wiped out. I shall soon be able to forget all I have suffered.
We will then meet again, and it will be impossible for our conversation to express anything but the pleasant sensations of the moment, added to that remembrance of my friend's loyalty and sympathy which will be all that will remain to me of the past. Let us not cloud this certainty by any possible happenings of the moment!
Farewell! Take my warmest thanks for the dear fellow that you are, and for having made Vienna so precious to me that I shall find it hard to part from it.
Well, then! No misunderstandings, nothing but unclouded friendship. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 579