[...] As you advised me I went at once to Italy and am now in Rome. Do you imagine that I got even one day's rest and recreation? This has never been granted me. All my worries follow me, the eternal anxiety about the deficit. Even if I put the material cares of my enterprise out of mind, you will understand me if, after all the extraordinary heart-stirring zeal which these performances called into being, I regard all our efforts as little more than waste of strength, aimless and useless.
How constantly I was obliged to observe your deep dissatisfaction! I opposed your expressions of it, because I could not agree with you that this or that redistribution of parts would have settled matters. You forgot that only you—you alone—were the genius of the performance, and that all the rest could only find place in it by their industry and noble intentions. In this last respect Betz's achievement was the most extraordinary, so that I really came to honour him. How sad that he appears to have lost his noble intentions now!—
But you can say all this to yourself better than I can! It would be a fine thing to have a repetition, which would now put many wrong things right, and to present the whole work once more in greatest possible purity. I must let this depend wholly on your will and on your influence over Betz.
Tell me yes or no speedily! But be ever assured that those fine moments in which a sense of unconstrained comradeship passed between us are among my most valued recollections. [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 695