Hearty thanks for your friendship. With this letter I am also dispatching a petition to the Koenigsberg courts for divorce from my wife. I am now destitute. I must get the Riga post. I cannot get away from here at the moment; I am staying with my brother-in-law Hermann Brockhaus, Ottilie's husband, and cannot leave them at once. Let me know by return of post if my presence in Berlin is immediately necessary, because if you could get the contract without that I should much prefer it. I haven't a penny at the moment and my affairs cannot be put in order forthwith. In spite of that I shall in any case see something of you for a time in Berlin, only somewhat later.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 41