I have naught to say to the father of my country: if he were to presume to call upon me in my swallow's-nest, I should shew him the door. His colours are white and green; this for Baur. —
The Muse is beginning to visit me: does it betoken the certainty of your visit? The first thing I found was a melody which I didn't at all know what to do with, till of a sudden the words from the last scene of Siegfried came into my head. A good omen. Yesterday I also lit on the commencement of act 2 — as Fafner's Rest; which has an element of humour in it. But you shall hear all about it, if the swallow comes to inspect her edifice to-morrow.
Rich. Wagner.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 28