It is you, dear friend, who are suffering and needing comfort; for the extraordinary letter which you found it possible to send me can only have sprung from a terrible mental irritation.  I hope in the meantime that this lengthy explanation and disclosure of the misunderstanding into which you had succeeded in falling will be some comfort to you.  I have none other to offer.  If your irritation concerned me alone, this letter should dispel it altogether.  Let me further assure you that you have hurt me in no way, for your arrows did not hit me; their barbs stuck in your own heart.  This letter, I hope, will free you of them.

One more thing let me ask you today.  Do not answer my letter of January 2nd.  Look upon it as if it had not been written, or, at least, not received.  I am fully aware that you are not able to put yourself in my place with such goodwill and understanding as would enable you to do justice to my letter.  Please forget it altogether; in that case, I will on my part pardon your reproaches, you curious, dear, dear friend.

Farewell for today.

I am sure I have not lost you.

Your

Richard Wagner.

Venice, January 7th, 1859.

In order to set your mind at rest, I inform you that, by a curious and lucky accident, some money, which I had long expected and already despaired of, arrived here from Vienna in the first week of the new year.  My three valuables (let a kind world forgive me this luxury!) are out of pawn.  For the present I am provided for, and do not apprehend any new stoppage of my resources just yet.

May the friendly remembrance of me be revived in you.

Your

Richard W.

283.

Your greeting, dearest Richard, has brought me the enchanting forgetfulness of all that should ever be far from us.  Receive my thanks, and let us continue to suffer patiently together.

Before you had written to ask me not to mention your proposal, I had communicated it at some length in the proper quarter.  As I might have expected, after numerous similar conversations (which I never mention to you) there were several reasons for not accepting it.  Perhaps I shall be able to broach the subject again later on, and obtain a more favourable result; to the extent, I mean, that a small sum will be sent to you.  Anything more cannot be hoped for.

I must ask you to believe that I am extremely grieved always to have to tell you things of this kind.

In your letter to Princess M. you speak of a change of abode, and of your desire to settle in a large town.  In case, against my sincere hope, the permission to return to Germany should be permanently refused to you, and you prefer to live in a large town, I still think that Paris would be the most comfortable, the most convenient, and even the cheapest place for you.  I know your dislike of this city pleine de boue et de fumee; but I think that if you were to live there for any length of time you would feel more at home, apart from which we should be tolerably near each other, so that I might visit you frequently.