Eduard Dervient stayed with me for three days last week, and inaugurated my little guest-chamber. To him I also spoke of my "Tristan" scheme; he highly approved of it, but was against Strassburg, and undertook, although generally a careful and timid man, to arrange about its first performance at Carlsruhe under my direction. The Grand Duke also seems to have got wind of something of the kind, probably through Devrient, for in one passage of his letter he pointedly alludes to his confident hope of seeing me soon at Carlsruhe.
Well, as God wills. This much I see, that I must, once more, perform a little miracle to make people believe in me.
About my work I am, as you may imagine, in a state of great and continual excitement.
Let it be settled that I have you in September; that is the chief thing.
A thousand cordial greetings to your dear home.
Ever thine,
RICHARD WAGNER.
246.
DEAREST RICHARD,
At your recommendation I am reading the Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe. Your last letter found me at this passage: "It is one of the greatest happinesses of my existence that I live to see the completion of these works, that they fall into the period of my activity, and that I am enabled to drink at this pure fountain. The beautiful relation existing between us constitutes a kind of religious duty on my part to make your cause my own, to develop every reality in my being to the purest mirror of the spirit which lives in this body, and to deserve by that means the name of your friend in a higher sense of the word" (p. 163, vol. i.).