Worse than in my work now, it can never have gone at Solferino; now that those folk are putting a stop to the bloodshed, I'm pushing it on. I'm making a terrible clearance; to-day I've struck Melot and Kurwenal dead, too. If you wish for a sight of the battle-field, you'd best come before everyone's buried.
A thousand greetings.
Your R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 87