AN OLD DEBT

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1, 7 January 1909, Page 38

AN OLD DEBT

The little Steiger Inn, near Dresden, has celebrated its. centennial, and this among other memories is quoted by the Staats-Zeitung as belonging to it : — In 1849, on a morning in May, the hostess of the innheard distant firing, and saw armed insurgents running, along the road, as if in flight. This was the last rem-' nant contributed by Dresden to the May revolution, ard the Prussians were hard' upon their track. Suddenly the hostess found herself confronted by a little man with smoke-begrimed face and hands, who nodded and rushed into the inn. ' Give me a basin of water,' he panted, ' and some, bread and meatl Quick! An instant's delay may mean death!' The hostess obeyed him. ' You don't seem to know me/ said he. ' Oh, I have seen you*often, but ' ' Well, I hope I have credit enough for my breakfast, for I haven't a pfennig about me. And I want a guide to show me the ¥ way through the forest to Freiberg.' So the hostess sent her son to guide him through the woods. Fourteen years after a well-dressed little gentleman presented himself one day. at the ,door of the inn and addressed the hostess with a smile: ' Good day, Frau Wirthin. I have come to pay my debts. I have not forgotten what you did for me that 9th of May.' He then paid for the breakfast eaten so long before. ' Now,' said he, ' that is off my conscience-. Perhaps you would v like to whom you have ' trusted so long; - Allow me to introduce myself as Richard Wagner, then a rebel, now amnestied by the King.' \ The great German composer had paid v his debt as dra-^ matieally as one of his operatic heroes, with a ' Behold, I' - have grown famous!'

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