My dear Friend!
In order that I may close the old year with something agreeable, I reply at once to your dear, dear greeting just received!
You dear just men, and particularly our chief co-worker, Zeroni! Be heartily greeted from me and mine!
Health, good spirits, and humour—in short, everything which one calls the gifts of God and of nature—are good. Here and there enormous difficulties, but always leading to something good.
Beautiful, very beautiful, was your dear visit, you two chief “just men”! But another time bring also the wives of the just men.
You will soon receive accurate information as to the progress of our preparations! Above all things, a wish for a good year from
Yours faithfully,
Richard Wagner.
Source: The Story of Bayreuth as Told in the Bayreuth Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Caroline V. Kerr (Small, Maynard and Company, 1912), No. 66