[...] I have told you again and again that I have carefully made all arrangements here for your reception. We two, and others as well, could live here side by side, quite independent of each other, each free to follow his work or his whim, and yet with the ever-present possibility of enjoying each other's society at any moment. Your piano, which would not disturb me, stands ready; there is a box full of cigars in your room, etc. This, my dear Peter, is ardour! It demands a response or—the wind will blow from another quarter! You have sent me not one line in answer to all mine, and yet you get H. Porges to tell me that you are sorry you cannot come, that you intend to revise your Cid during the next three months, and must therefore remain in Vienna.—
Now, which is better, dear Peter—that we should discuss this curious behaviour—or say nothing? I am almost inclined to think that it is better to say nothing, for—quite obviously—there is something behind all this which discussion is more likely to distort and blur than to straighten out.—Life after all is dominated by instinct and impulse. We are attracted or repelled apart from all fact or reason to the contrary. When I ask how these instincts and impulses have moved you in relation to me hitherto, the issue of inquiry is unfavourable to me. Two years ago this very day I was eagerly expecting you in Biebrich. For a long time I got no news at all, and then one day suddenly heard through a third person that you had been persuaded by Tausig to go to Geneva. You never knew how deeply that disturbed me.
That kind of thing must not occur this time, for we must be perfectly frank with each other as man to man.
I cannot accept as valid the reason you give for not wishing to trust to my provisions for your working in peace here. This time a year ago you left Vienna and went to Munich in order to work undisturbed. Moreover, I intend to work here and now. I can no more see how your Cid could disturb my Mastersingers than vice versa. On the contrary, I have been governed by care for you, and for your work as well as for my own. I was very desirous—I tell you so frankly—to be able to help you in the revision of your opera with my sincere and loyal advice. However, if you want to avoid that—well, that is a question of will and it is most certainly not a matter for discussion. [...]
Whatever the circumstances, greater frankness with me is becoming. Your present behaviour is (in view of the warmth of my feelings) nothing short of wounding—and so I feel it already.
Therefore, my dear Peter, you must not [...] take it amiss if I tell you of the irrevocable conclusion to which my conflicting feelings have brought me. Either you accept my invitation forthwith and thereby prepare to enter into what we might call a kind of domestic treaty to settle down with me for my life, or—you disdain me, and accordingly expressly renounce the wish to unite your lot with mine. In the latter case I, for my part, will also wholly and finally renounce all claim on you, and for the future cease to take you into account in any way in planning my life.—
Beyond this, it must depend on the degree of frankness you observe to me, whether we are ordained by Fate to have any further friendly intercourse at all. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 585