Dearest Franz,
I am very slowly regaining my strength. What impedes my recovery, and indeed makes it impossible for the present, are the extraordinary exertions and excitements to which I have to expose my health, which is gradually coming back to me. My daily occupation is this, that by the utmost care and by abstaining from any other kind of activity, however slight, I manage to attend the rehearsals at the opera. The proofs of Rhinegold, which Messrs. Schott would have liked so much to have published at Christmas, have been lying on my table for seven weeks without my being able to make any progress with them. Guess at my condition from this fact, and forgive me anything that I may have done to shock you. Pardon, for example, my not having thanked you before for sending me Muller's copy of my Nibelungen. Good Lord! I wanted so much to hasten the publication, and hurried you in consequence. Now I possess the copy, and have not been able even to look at it.
I also found it impossible to send you the book before this; I have a horror of undertaking anything, and apart from this, the Paris publishers treat one with abominable negligence. The German original of my letter to Villot you have probably seen. I have not been able yet to address a single line to my Leipzig publisher in connection with this matter. For Tannhäuser I have still to score the grand new scene for Venus, and to compose the whole of the Venusberg dance music. How this is to get done in time without a miracle I fail to perceive. I wish YOU would at last come to Paris. But no more of this. I cannot speak of anything at greater length, firstly, because I know too little, and secondly, because I must absolutely conclude these lines.
Richard Wagner
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #4234, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 2, No. 312