I have been travelling the last five weeks and am still doing so. Listen! Besides other expeditions I visited Kosen in particular for a time, and saw Laube. Oh, how rottenly and shabbily that man Schlesier has treated Laube! Just suppose that I were now utterly to betray you and your friendship to me in the most dastardly fashion and desert you like a coward, and you may have some idea of Schlesier's guilt. The fact that in spite of this Laube judges him so mildly makes me think highly of him. He smilingly declares him half crazy and that is all!
I have been in Magdeburg and there my immediate fate has again been decided. Affairs at the theatre have now taken the best of turns. Upon the representations of Frank, the mayor, the King has promised his support and continuance of the same on condition that the management is in trustworthy hands. The committee has now undertaken this, and you can believe me when I tell you that the matter is established on a completely secure and honourable basis. Everything is open to me, and I have closed with the committee again on condition of a higher salary and more complete power over the opera. This should open in September, and I am now travelling on behalf of the theatre to book singers. Much has been entrusted to me and I am now myself answerable for everything. I like to have to rely on myself alone and to see things so completely in my own hands.
Dear Theodore, ought I really to drag on this miserable existence in Leipzig? By God, no, not even though it involve the greatest of sorrows, parting from you! I leave to-morrow for Teplitz, Karlsbad, Prague, Vienna, etc.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 20