RICHARD.
BERNE, August 25th, 1853.
127.
DEAREST FRIEND,
I am back again in Zurich, unwell, low-spirited, ready to die. At Genoa I became ill, and was terror-struck by my solitary condition, but I was determined to do Italy, and went on to Spezzia. My indisposition increased; enjoyment was out of the question; so I turned back to die or to compose, one or the other; nothing else remains to me.
Here you have the whole story of my journey, my "Italian journey."
I am anxious because I have had no letter from you for so long. You received a letter from me at Leipzig; has it annoyed you? From Berne I wrote to you about the vise of my passport for France, and you were to send your answer to Turin. If that has been done, the letter will be forwarded to me. But why is it that I hear nothing else of you? Has the Carlsruhe festival been postponed, and will it be too late for you to come to Paris? I must be content; I want to see you, wherever it may be; if Zurich is too far for you, I will come to Basle. Paris begins almost to be unpleasant to me in my imagination; I am afraid of Berlioz. With my bad French, I am simply lost.
I have found many silly letters here, amongst others the enclosed from Director Engel, of Kroll's establishment, Berlin. It seems to me as if I could scarcely accept his proposition. May I leave the matter to you, and will you kindly take the decision upon yourself? In order to know what may be useful or detrimental, one must have a local knowledge, which I cannot possibly acquire here. Could you through Kroll, SchafFer, and others make inquiries which would enable you to judge of the effect of such an undertaking as that projected by Engel? To me this "Tannhauser" on the concert platform is horrible, in spite of the six louis d'or for each performance. Of course I cannot tell whether, apart from the absurdity of the thing, it would not be well to keep the fire alight in Berlin. It seems certain that in the higher regions there everything is as dull as possible, and that no decisive step in my favour will be made in that quarter. I wish you would simply say "Yes" or "No." How about Leipzig? I can get no real information from there. It is very long since I heard anything of you!
Alas! I am out of sorts and God-forsaken. I feel so lonely, and yet do not want to see any one. What a miserable existence! I cannot help smiling when I read in B.'s paper the articles by R. F.'s brother-in-law; the man thinks he is going thoroughly to the bottom of the thing, because he is so moderate and cautious; he knows very little of me. Formerly I was very sensitive to being fumbled about in this manner; at present I am quite indifferent, because I know that this kind of thing does not touch me at all. If these people would but know that I wish to be entirely happy only once, and after that should not care to exist any more! Oh for the leathern immortality of india-rubber, which these people think it necessary to attribute to one by way of reward!
Adieu, dearest and best. See that we soon possess each other again, otherwise I shall go from bad to worse.