Dearest Friend!
I return the Vienna letter to you with many thanks. We must discuss it again sometime.
But for to-day, dear friend, I wish to express my thanks to you for the extraordinary patience, wisdom, and energy which you have employed in dealing with the situation in regard to the Festival deficit, and to express my great joy that, although this has been accomplished through the King's noble friendship for me, it is your efforts which have led up to such satisfactory results.
The turn in our affairs is all the more comforting to me, as it is, in reality, owing to the unexpected success of my own work that we now find ourselves provided with means with which to struggle against the lamentable material results of the year 1876. That is creditable.
But it will depend only upon your confidence in the matter, that, out of the friendly decision of the King, a prompt and genuine solution of the painful situation can be found.
All of this I know, and recognise distinctly, and therefore express to you the most sincere gratitude of a friend.
The chief gain in all this is that I shall now be able to devote myself with calm imperturbability to new creations, which must be uninterrupted and undisturbed or else the good spirits take instant flight from us queer “geniuses.” Accept my thanks now and always!
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. 111