Dear precious Child, fair kindly soul, have thanks for all your messages!
You shall have a brief bulletin from me as often as possible.
I am picking up — very slowly — but still picking up. — I have scarcely any recollection of the first week of my illness, but now my mind is gradually clearing. For several days I was almost totally blind; now I'm uncommonly weak, amazingly emaciated, with eyes deep-sunk. You know that I am never wholly free from pain, which nothing save nervous excitement could numb; now that I have to avoid all excitement, you may guess what is left of me! —
Yet, too much is dangled in front of me still, and Life, I suppose, will soon have back the whole of me!
Yesterday I was taken for a drive to the Champs Elysées, with a little walk in the sun, which did me good. I'm coming round; moreover, I've recovered patience. —
In my humble new abode the three Roman prints hang framed above and round my couch! —
Adieu for to-day; I can write no longer! — Thanks, a thousand thanks, and deep fidelity of heart! —
R. W.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 114