Lady-friend!
You do wrong to pay any heed to me; this time it positively shames me. I was unaware, and accordingly uneasy. One word sufficed, one mournful, hopeless word! O how much happier to be dead oneself, than see a loved one die! — So it is moving over you, and you are receiving one initiation after another! To the serious mind it is initiation: thought and feeling blend in it to one; it feels the deepest-thought, and knows how direly true that is!
For your mother I have shed a tear-drop big with meaning; for yourself, be welcomed to this solemn realm where I am now a denizen, and whence alone I still can look upon the world, — can even see it bright of semblance, since I look no longer into, but from out the night!
Leave the Meistersinger quite aside; the manuscript belongs to you; I had no other purpose than to render you your property!
Heartfelt greetings to Otto and the children!
R. W.
Biebrich (bei Architect Frickhöffer).
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 135