[...] Your telegram with the sad news was re-telegraphed to me here from Geneva; even this could not have been done before yesterday evening, since I left Geneva last Monday, have been travelling from place to place, and only sent word there yesterday afternoon that I would expect letters and dispatches here for the present. This morning, after a wretched night, I can only describe my condition as one of complete stupefaction—I sit brooding apathetically, groping vaguely for the ideas which should occupy my mind!
My measure is filled up and running over. A nature made for incessant artistic creation and artistic invention in an atmosphere of peace and quiet, lovingly safeguarded, finds itself at length so utterly abused, so falsely used under the dispensation life imposes, that in the end I am driven to smile in a way which the world may well take for a kind of madness! Enough! Let us consider what is the next thing to be done! [...]
[...] I may take it that your friendly care has shown those honours to my poor, my unhappy wife's body, which I would have shown her had she drawn her last breath blessedly beside the husband whom she had blessed. In the same spirit I beg you to provide for her resting-place.
At the wish of the deceased, last year I gave her full power to dispose as she might think fit of all matters in her possession, whether belonging to us both or more particularly to me. I take it, therefore, that she has made testamentary disposition of everything, and that I have no need to intervene further. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 613