Dear Friend,
I am more and more possessed by the thought that we soon shall see you in our midst, and it will be a real sabbath of the heart to me, to make your stay as pleasant as possible. I believe our home contains the elements of a familiar fellowship, without gêne or other sacrifice for individuals: la vie est une science, says a clever Frenchman, a science that has to be studied. At times a calm comes o'er the sea, the heavens shew no cloud; and so in human life are intervals when Fate seems to be holding its breath. May such an interval be ours!
What I so sincerely wish and try for, is such a very little thing that perhaps it will only draw a smile from you. It is at least to see you with us once a-year, and so at home that every nook and cranny in the house is quite familiar, and the children don't grow strangers to you. I have constantly striven to keep fresh in their memory your former living with us, and to this day the children only know the Asyl by the name of Uncle Wagner's garden. The idea of seeing it fall into strange hands had long distressed me, but I am at last beginning to feel safe about that; for the little house has now been included with the rest, and is treated as belonging to the larger plot by way of kitchen-gardens and the like; and again, because part of the lower storey has been converted into Carl's schoolroom and his tutor's room. In this way the chalet comes under my special care, and I have been given the duty of guarding it from decay or dilapidation. I need hardly tell you that even this affords me a sort of melancholy pleasure; you yourself know only too well what a solace the heart seeks in such things, — things which in themselves are nothing, and the crowd so readily calls "useless," yet where all is of weight to the heart. That ever retains its ideal, in which the world has neither part nor lot; it opens to a golden key, and has vanished when the world imagines it has locked it fast.
I do hope I shall soon hear about you and your plans! The lovely iridescent autumn days are over now, and frosty friend Winter stands without the door; within, however, all grows warm and bright. Otto's recovery goes on as fast as we could wish, and I hope the last traces of his illness will soon have disappeared entirely. Keep up your courage also, and hold in affectionate heart
Your Mathilde Wesendonck.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 164