As usual, dearest friend, you have had an excellent idea. It is settled, then, that we go to Paris, and have a meeting there at the end of September, after the Carlsruhe performances. As your chief purpose for the time being is to see the Mediterranean, I advise you to go to Genoa and Marseilles, and thence to Paris. Napoleon says, La Mediterranee est un lac francais, so you may go from your Swiss lakes to the French lake for a few weeks and then come to me in Paris. By the middle of October I must be back at Weymar, but a fortnight in Paris will be quite enough for us. Therefore this is settled.
T. will be very welcome at Weymar. He wrote to me once or twice before, and, between ourselves, I have heard several things about him which make me think that his character is not oversolid. But that does not matter, and may be left to Meser.
A few days ago I received a letter from Berlioz, in answer to my last, in which I had said several things about you. I quote the following lines: Our art, as we understand it, is an art of millionaires; it requires millions. As soon as these millions are found every difficulty disappears; every dark intellect is illumined; moles and foxes are driven back into the earth; the marble block becomes a god, and the public human: without these millions we remain clodhoppers after thirty years' exertion. And yet there is not a sovereign, not a Rothschild, who will understand this. Is it not possible that, after all, we, with our secret pretensions, should simply be stupid and insolent fools? I am, like yourself, convinced of the ease with which Wagner and I should fit each other if only he would grease his wheels a little. As to the few lines of which you speak, I have never read them, and therefore feel not the slightest resentment on their account. I have fired too many pistol-shots at the legs of passers-by to be astonished at receiving a few pellets myself. In Paris we shall continue the subject; material and good fun will not be wanting. At Leipzig I hope to find a few lines from you, and by the end of this month I shall write to you from Weymar when and how long I can be in Paris. If in the meantime I should have to write to you, I shall address it to Zurich, as you must to Weymar. At Leipzig I shall attend to the Lohengrin affair; so far I have heard nothing about it.
Franz Liszt
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 122