[...] I need scarcely tell you what joy your letter and your invitation have given me!—Certainly, we will come, for you shall be the first to whom we present ourselves as married folk. It has taken much patience to reach this point; a thing inevitable years ago was only to be accomplished at last through all kinds of suffering. Since last I saw you in Munich I have never left the retreat whither, since then, she too fled for refuge—she who was to prove that I could be helped, and that the statement of so many of my friends that "I was not to be helped" was untrue. She knew I might be helped, and she has helped me. She has braved every insult and taken every condemnation upon herself. She has borne me a wonderfully beautiful and sturdy son, whom I could audaciously call "Siegfried"; he is flourishing with my works, and is giving me renewed long life, life which at last has found a meaning.—
So, then, we get on without the "world," from which we have retired completely. Thus genuine affection has been tested, and more touching even than the acquisition of new friends has been the loyalty of old ones. My sister, Ottilie Brockhaus, visited us with her family as long ago as late last summer. [...]
But listen, now. You will agree, I hope, that it is right and sensible that I should not come in response to your invitation till I can bring my son's mother with me as my wedded wife also. Now, at last, this time is not far ahead, and we hope to be in Mariafeld before the leaves fall. [...]
You prophesied it to me, you noble woman! Don't you remember—when you sped me from your hospitable house six years ago? I was miserable—but you looked at me and foretold—you well remember what! Well, my friend, come and convince yourself that you have the good heart of a true prophetess! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 643