Confess that this is something like a situation.  And all this torture, and trouble, and care about a life which I hate, which I curse!  And, in addition to this, I appear ridiculous before my visitors, and taste the delightful sensation of having surrendered the noblest work of my life so far to the predetermined stupidity of our theatrical mob and to the laughter of the Philistine.

Lord, how must I appear to myself?  I wish that at least I had the satisfaction that some one knew how I appear to myself.

Listen, my Franz; you must help me!  I am in a bad, a very bad, way.  If I am to regain the faculty of holding out (this word means much to me), something thorough must be done in the direction of prostituting my art which I have once taken, otherwise all is over with me.  Have you thought of Berlin again?  Something must be done there if all is not to come to a stop.

Before all, I must have money.  The Hartels have been very liberal, but what is the good of hundreds where thousands are needed?  If the Berlin purchase had come to something, I might at least have used the offer in order to prove to a man of business here that I possessed “capital,” and to induce him to lend me the necessary sum for three years, paying back one-third every year.  But this hope also has vanished.  No one will undertake such an affair unless he has personal confidence in my future (?) successes.  Such a man, dearest Franz, you must find for me.  Once more, I want from 3,000 to 4,000 thalers in order to find perfect rest and equipoise.  That much my operas may well bring me in in three years in case something real is done for “Lohengrin,” so as to save it.  I am willing to lease my rights to the lender; my rights in “Tannhauser” and “Lohengrin” shall be secured to him in any way he thinks desirable or necessary.  If I am not worthy of such a service, then you must own that I am in a bad way, and all has been a mistake!  Help me over this, and I will undertake once more to hold out.

Dear friend, do not be angry.  I have a claim on you as on my creator.  You are the creator of the person I am now; I live through you:  it is no exaggeration.  Take care of your creation.  I call this a duty which you have towards me.

The only thing I want is money; that at least one ought to be able to get.  Love I abandon, and art!

Well, the “Rhinegold” is ready, readier than I ever thought it would be.  I went to this music with so much faith, so much joy; and with a true fury of despair I continued, and have at last finished it.  Alas! the need of gold held me too in its net.  Believe me, no one ever has composed in this manner; my music, it seems to me, must be terrible; it is a slough of horrors and sublimities.

I shall soon make a clean copy, black on white, and that will probably be the end of it; or shall I give permission to have this also performed at Leipzig for twenty louis d’or?  I cannot write more to you today.  You are the only person to whom I could tell such a thing; no one else has an idea of it, least of all the people near me.