O friend,
Only get strong and well! The severest calamity that could have befallen us during all the seven years of which you write is that you were so often kept from us by so much outward "dislocalität" (give me the word, please!) and inward "dyskolie" (also good!).
Unfortunately, I have reached the point where I am only able to rescue myself from the quagmire of existence by calling good and bad jests to my aid. Yesterday we had an improvised banquet in the artists' restaurant near the theatre, and one of the guests proposed a toast to the effect that my reputation would be tremendously increased through the success of the Festival. I replied that I had found a hair in my reputation and was therefore ready to transfer this "hide and hair" to Albert, the very competent manager of the restaurant. I stormed at my coachman because he did not congratulate me on this witticism! Otherwise everything was very nice, chiefly because it was over with. The "enterprise," on the whole, has cost me enough trouble and annoyance, and everyone connected with it fears me as he would the devil.
When all this is over, I hope to stretch myself out at full length—probably in Italy, where I have resolved to take my ease with wife and child and live on the receipts of my American march.
But for the present, on through thick and thin! If I feel that you are looking on in your own way, I shall know that the trouble has not been in vain. "Natura nihil facit frustra," said Schopenhauer to me recently, and this was a comforting thought.
Remain full of courage and in good health, and give our best greetings to the little sister. It will not be long before we shall see each other again.
It is something quite extraordinary for me to write so long a letter—as a usual thing, I only write telegrams.
Source: The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, ed. Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, trans. Caroline V. Kerr (Boni and Liveright, 1921), No. 50