Can it really be as much as 14 days since I left you, and I am only just writing to you? I arrived here in the evening the day before yesterday, and yesterday wasted a whole day trying to meet Meyerbeer. We have never found any leave-taking so hard as that from Paris. God! What are all the sufferings we endured there compared with the consciousness we carry away with us of a perfect and enduring friendship? What have you been doing with Minna? You have quite changed her heart, and Paris seems a paradise to her now. She never stopped crying all through the journey. Even when she began to get a little calmer her only answer to the attempts at consolation which I felt I ought to make was, "May I cry again now?" Her relatives were quite indifferent to her, and when I left her to go to Dresden she told me quite simply that she was not crying over my departure, but because she did not know how she was to get back to Paris. Oh, my dears, believe me, I share her feelings. I am still very lukewarm in the conduct of my affairs, for my head is full of Paris and the good kind hearts there, which I know beat for me too. Minna is determined that things shall go ill with me so that I have to make a contract with Schlesinger and go back to Paris! The poor dear thinks of nothing but Paris.
For the moment I can't do much here as the new manager, Kiistner, has not arrived yet and, as Meyerbeer assured me would be the case, Redern neither can nor dare decide anything as to the date for the performance of my opera. It is pretty well all the same to me, I wish I were with you. What I shall live on this summer I don't yet know. Write to us about Herr and Madame Kiihne, whom I am not writing to now, as I am waiting for a time when I can do so with Minna. Assure them of the deep love and thanks with which we daily remember those excellent people.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 65