[...] Thank you, my dearest brother-in-law! The Order of Maximilian seems to have appeared a weightier matter to your kind interest in me than it has appeared to myself. Just nine years ago, by the choice of the Chapter of the Order, my name was proposed to the King of Bavaria. At the time, knowing absolutely nothing of this Order or its statutes, I simply received a communication from the Secretary of the Cabinet, saying that the King (on his own initiative, as I was left to suppose) wished to present me with this Order, and asking if I would accept. Thereupon, I replied that I besought the King graciously to abstain from this fresh mark of his favour at a moment when his relations with me were already attracting more than enough hostile attention, and added that I had reached an age when, having seen my pupils decorated with Orders of all kinds, I could well be content with this for the rest of my life. The Cabinet, glad of the opportunity to create bad blood between me and the Chapter of the Order, and thus make my position in Munich still more untenable, used my declaration to do all the harm they desired, and it was not till some time later that I learned that Liebig, Kaulbach and the rest, felt I had deeply insulted them. Well, when after nine years these gentlemen reasserted their choice, I felt really rather touched, and this time, when the matter was put before me correctly and formally, I quietly let it proceed, even though to do so robbed me of the pride of going to my grave without suchlike honours. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 662