My dear good Minna,
I hope these lines will duly reach you on your birthday, and so I offer you with fervent heart my profound congratulations on this birthday whose returns we certainly shan't celebrate apart again. It will be the second you have passed in succession without me; but to-day, for sure, you're thinking of me with other sentiments than was still the case a year ago. For sure that doubt about me and my attitude to you has vanished altogether from your heart, and you know you've no more cause to fret about me. This, then, is the gain an otherwise so trying year has brought: hold fast to it, and let to-day's birthday give you this contentment for your poor tortured heart!
So — what do I wish you? — That, just as your mind is now at rest, your bodily heart may also lull itself! Health!! Everything else lies in our moral power; even Luck at last will grant its blessing, be sure of it! So keep you this day as a day of rest, of deep inward repose! —
I shall soon be able to inform you of — my departure; all now depends on naught save one more letter.
Farewell, good Minna! Accept the best salutes and kisses of
Thy Richard-man.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 2 (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), No. 188