A thousand thanks for your exact and obliging packet of cigars. If you should have the opportunity of sending me some samples of a kind neither too thin nor too light, at about twenty to twenty- five thalers the thousand, I shall willingly give an order for some, which might be followed by a larger order.
Schuberth of Hamburg has just sent me your transcriptions of the Schumann songs, which have given me real pleasure. If you publish other things kindly let me know, for you know the sincere interest I feel both in yourself and in your works,—an interest I hope to have the opportunity of showing you more and more.
Meanwhile believe me yours affectionately,
F. Liszt
P.S.—I have not forgotten the little commission you gave me relative to the "Fantasie-Stucke," and in a few weeks I will let you have a copy of the new edition.
60. To Robert Schumann
[original in the Royal Library in Berlin]
Dear, esteemed Friend,
Before everything allow me to repeat to you what, next after myself, you ought properly to have known best a long time ago— namely, that no one honors and admires you more truly than my humble self.
When opportunity occurs we can certainly have a friendly discussion on the importance of a work, a man, even a town indeed. For the present I am specially rejoicing in the prospect of an early performance of your opera, and beg you most urgently to let me know about it a few days beforehand, as I shall most certainly come to Leipzig on that occasion, and then we can also arrange for it to be studied in Weymar as soon as possible afterwards. Perhaps you will also find time there to make me acquainted with your "Faust." For this composition I am anxiously waiting, and your resolution to give this work a greater length and breadth appears to me most judicious. A great subject demands generally a grand treatment. Although the Vision of Ezekiel attains in its small dimensions the culminating point of Raphael's greatness, yet he painted the School of Athens and the entire frescoes in the Vatican.