I wrote to the Prince of Prussia the day before yesterday explaining your business at some length to him.  I shall probably have a reply, which I will communicate to you in due course.  The warlike dangers in Switzerland do not appear to me of a very urgent kind, but I thought this a good opportunity for calling the attention of the Prince to your miserable fate, which is in such glaring contrast to your fame and artistic activity.  The Prince is an honourable character, and it may be expected that his intercession will be of service to you later on.  In the meantime, you ought, I think, to take no further step, nor waste a single word, because this would lead only to useless humiliation for you.

As soon as the favourable moment arrives which I expect, I shall write to you.  On the occasion of the performance of “Lohengrin” for the wedding of the son of the Prince of Prussia, I advise you again to write to the young Prince in the sense previously discussed by us.  Probably your affair will have entered a different stage by then.

“Tannhauser” was given here on Boxing-day with great success, and “Lohengrin” will follow soon.  For the latter we shall have to get Frau Stager from Prague, because amongst our local artists there is none who could undertake Ortrud.  Otherwise everything here is very much in the old groove, and there is little to please me.

I long very much for my work.  As soon as I am quite recovered I shall shut myself up in it, and you will be always present to my mind, until we may at last live together in the body.

Your

F. L.

233.

January 6th, 1857.

Is not this a miserable thing, dearest Franz?  I had been looking forward to your letter as to a Christmas present, and now it brings me nothing but sad and comfortless news.  That you are once more confined to your bed is the crown of my sorrow.

Ah, heavens!  Why do we not give in altogether?

It seems to me that you have not received my long letter, which I sent you at Weimar on the supposition that you would go there straight from Munich, and the same has, I fear, been the case with my letter to M., or else she would have surely sent me a few lines in reply.  Concerning my letter to you, it touches upon a point to which I must urgently return once more, because I want your definite reply as soon as possible.  Since you left me an important change has taken place in my situation; I have absolutely given up the annual allowance which the R.’s made me.  In such circumstances, my only hope is the speedy success of the Hartel affair in connection with the “Nibelungen,” which had been broken off.  In accordance with your kind offer, I gave you unlimited power with regard to it.  But now you are again tied to your bed, and cannot, in any case for the present, pay the visit to Leipzig which would be necessary for the settlement of such an affair.  Consider, therefore, whether you are