As I told you before, it is fully established that my wife's love for me was stronger and more implicit than her doubts and misunderstanding of my character. Since these last experiences, it has given her strength to believe me implicitly even in matters in which she never understood me. And more than that: she could not do otherwise than believe the charges brought against me by the Bordeaux people, and yet she cherishes but one wish, that I should return to her, because in her very heart of hearts she has come to know that without me she cannot live. She would never have accepted monetary support from me unless I gave it her with my own hand. In the power of this love, which she has grown conscious of, victorious over all doubts and errors, in a time of stress and calamity, she seems to me an entirely new and different being from my wife of old. So it was that I came to know what I am to her, and I could not therefore hesitate a moment to wish to be that to her in actuality.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 180