There is one good being who brightens my household--the wife of Bülow; she has been with her children. If you can come to see me I shall be happy. My god-child, Richard Wagner, is now eight years old, you tell me; bring him; the talk of a dear innocent child will do me good; to have him near me will, perhaps, comfort me.
The preceding letter is to me a landmark in Wagner’s life. The facts have only to be recited for it to be clearly perceived what a striking climax had been reached. Upon them I make no comment. They speak for themselves--the sudden transformation from a state of hardship into one of security; the powerful patronage and friendship of the king of Bavaria; the absence of Minna; the presence of Madame von Bülow.
New influences were now beginning to work upon Wagner; and--they were not weak. I did not see Wagner until the next year, when the change was pronounced. During the winter the attachment of the king grew in warmth, until in a manner Wagner may be said to have dominated the youthful monarch completely. In the early spring of 1865, Wagner wrote me the following short note. It was in reply to one from me, urging him to find some occupation for August Roeckel, who had been released since the January of 1862. When Roeckel was at Dresden, in 1849, with Richard Wagner, he had effaced himself entirely for his friend. Then Wagner was appreciative of sacrifices upon the altar of friendship, and regarded them as done on his behalf entirely; but he later grew so absorbed with his mission that no sacrifice did he regard as done to himself, but for the glory of his art, and in this no sacrifice could be too great. The short note after a private reference to Roeckel runs as follows:--
...At present I cannot. Time may be when the good August shall feel that his old friend lives--now, all I can say is that the king loves me with a love beyond description. I feel as sure of his love for me till the end, as I am conscious of his unbounded goodness to me now. It is a trial, though, of the heaviest; the formation of his mind I feel it a duty to undertake. He is so strikingly handsome that he might pose as the King of the Jews (and--this in confidence--I am seriously reflecting on the Christian tragedy; possibly something may come of it). But you must forgive me any more correspondence just now, I am busy.