I am sorry to bore you with all this stuff, and only ask you not to give way to irritation, and not to say or to write a single rash word, because the matter is of decided importance, and a trustworthy publisher is not easily found.  The publication of the “Nibelungen” in full score and pianoforte arrangement will require an outlay of at least ten thousand thalers, for which few firms will be prepared.  For the present I should advise you to keep quite quiet, and to invite the Hartels simply, and if need be repeatedly, to visit you, leaving all further discussion as to the terms of publication till you have given them more accurate insight into the matter; that is, till your meeting at Zurich.

Your

Franz.

What is your present address?

Richard Pohl has asked me to inquire of you whether you will be at Zurich in July, and whether he may pay you a visit there?

244.

Zurich, May 8th, 1857.

At last, dearest Franz, I am able to give you an answer by letter.

First of all, receive my heartiest congratulations on the good state of your health.  Your letter has joyfully surprised me, and, to my greatest delight, has made me feel ashamed of my intrusive anxiety about you.  Your organisation is a perfect riddle to me, and I hope that you will always solve that riddle in as satisfactory a manner as this time, when I looked on with real anxiety.  Heaven grant that your profession of good health may not be that of a Spartan!

All the more sorry do I feel that you have not been able to dispel my anxiety as to the Princess also.  At our last meeting at Zurich my impression of your (to me) strange and very exciting mode of life frightened me so much that I am really less astonished at the Princess being on a sick bed than at your being up again.  My very eager anxiety about both of you is perhaps in bad taste; for you are accustomed to taking care of yourselves, and acknowledge probably no special right on my part to trouble about you.  Heaven grant that patience and good advice may restore our magnanimous friend as soon as possible; when she is once well again I shall be quite willing to plead guilty to the charge of impertinence.  You say nothing of the health of her daughter, who was also severely indisposed.  May your good star guide you; in one important point I shall always remain a stranger to you all.

I shall have no further trouble with the Hartels, as I have determined finally to give up my headstrong design of completing the “Nibelungen.”  I have led my young Siegfried to a beautiful forest solitude, and there have left him under a linden tree, and taken leave of him with heartfelt tears.  He will be better off there than elsewhere.  If I were ever to resume the work some one would have to make it very easy for me, or else I should have to be in a position to present it to the world as