Dear Minna,
I am sending a few written lines on the heels of to-day's telegram, to remove any anxiety it may have aroused in you concerning my health. A little fever has appeared with me since yesterday: I hoped it would vanish after a good night; only the night was very restless, and I have to keep myself very passive and quiet to-day, not to increase the fever — in no case more than a catarrhal. Under such circumstances the anyhow fatiguing journey to Dresden wasn't well to be thought of. That's all! It is a singular fate that this illness — however slight — should have seized me precisely this week. Perhaps, though, the very unrest in which my travel scheme had plunged me was to blame for it: as I always am pedantic with my work once I'm fairly into it, I had meant to let the trip depend on my having got clean through a new scene in good time. That made me rather overtax myself in the end, and now I have to pay for it by several days' stoppage of work. Rest will set me up again at once; consequently I also expect to be able to write you properly within the next two days at latest.
Kind love from
Thy Richard.
Source: Richard to Minna Wagner: Letters to His First Wife, trans. William Ashton Ellis, Vol. 2 (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), No. 245