Very good, Mietzel, I won't be stubborn! — So put on your best clothes at once, and pay a call on Frau Bodmer-Stockar. Tell her you would like to know if she believes I should have any success if I wrote to her husband about the estate I have in mind: she is pretty sure to know if there is any possibility of their giving the Trümplers notice. What I should propose, would be to take this property on a life lease — or for 10 years — to do up the interior and make it comfortable for winter. Tell her how much I need to live in solitude, and that I meant to go away from Zurich at last if I couldn't find anything suitable. In short, do all you can to get a favourable decision from the lady — who appears to me the leading person. All else shall then depend on it, and in a favourable event I shall be quite content to satisfy my need in this way, by which I should get what I want for less money.
So play your part well, and tell me the result at once. Indeed I've nothing more to tell you, excepting that it's 9 o'clock at night, and I am soon going to bed. A fortnight from to-day we shall be hammering away again!
Addio, cara amica!
Il tuo Riccardo.
Am I not lamb-like?
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 1 (H. Grevel & Co., 1909), No. 112