I have just been reading the sketch of the Meistersinger. I think it excellent, and hope you will make great use of it; it is full of subtle touches which may save you much extra labour. My blessing on the resumption of this work! I rejoice at it as at a festival, for in Venice I hardly dared to cherish such a hope.
You have brought to naught one silent Christmas treat I had promised myself. You were to have received a letter on my birthday — now it lies in Vienna! A little box, containing sundry trifles we had happened to speak about, was to have taken you by surprise on Christmas day: I had prepared all this with so much pleasure, working at it with such haste and eagerness, in the secret fear lest it should not be ready until too late; and now I shall probably receive it back from Vienna ere long! —
The translation of Cervantes is a most valuable find. I conclude that the manuscript is beyond suspicion? It would certainly be difficult to imitate Cervantes plausibly.
Thank you so much for your kind letter, which at least brought your handwriting back to me, altho' I could not quite recognise my friend's usual exalted mood.
And now receive sincerest wishes and regards
From your Mathilde Wesendonck.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 156