"HIGHLY HONOURED SIR AND FRIEND,--Now that, after a long and painful interruption of the way of living I have been accustomed to for many years, I have again won a little repose, permit me to approach you with the remembrance of your so friendly advances to me last summer, in order in some degree to link myself again with the life on which you have imprinted a significantly agreeable memory. If you found something strange at our meeting, something on my part apparently not quite corresponding to your friendly intentions, I now permit myself, by way of exculpation, to say that at that time I was in a very agitated and embarrassed frame of mind; few people know what difficult resolutions were maturing in me at that time.[30] It may, however, suffice for me to tell you that only now, after leaving my friendly refuge by the Lake of Zürich, in order to compose my mind here, in the greatest seclusion, for the resumption of my work, has the pleasant and encouraging significance of your Zürich visit become quite clear to me. By my sincere regret to know that you were in some degree hurt through a mistake of my servant,[31] you probably, nevertheless, understood even then how earnestly I realised the value of your visit; your friendly assurance that you were satisfied with my explanation of that misunderstanding was most tranquillising for me. Let me now say that I estimate highly the value of your advances, and with my whole heart I shall do my best to deserve your friendship--if you will favour me with it--can and most sincerely to reciprocate it. On the occasion of another personal meeting, if you will be so good, I hope that you will learn, with some satisfaction, in what sense I give you this assurance. I chiefly remember with the greatest pleasure that you expressed to me the wish that perhaps the first performance of my latest work, _Tristan and Isolde_, might be entrusted to you. I have so agreeable a recollection of this wish, that I can only regret not being able to gratify it immediately. Unfortunately just at the time when we met I was so grievously interrupted in this very work that only now again, for the first time, can I cherish the hope of getting into the proper mood for continuing and completing it. Consequently this _opus_ is not one as to the time of whose coming to the light I can decide anything definite--which is in every respect unpleasant for me.