My Dear Friend!
Well, here's another of those queer legal papers from Dresden! Since I don't in the least know what's to be done about it, and at all events it refers to a matter where it's no longer up to me to decide, I am sending the letter to you with the request that you bring it to the attention of your business manager. I should not know how to reply to the question which is put to me in it, other than that I can give no information regarding the note in question, since I have never — such is my firm belief — had hold of it; the debt was contracted through Meser and his lawyer, Heimann, and I had only to sign. However, in the report of Meser's attorney regarding the state of our business, which I forwarded to you some time ago, the debt to Tietz was, if I am not mistaken, entered as already paid off, or very shortly to be settled; what the case regarding this matter may be now is as much of a puzzle to me as many another thing in the enclosed letter. If you have the time to give me some information about this, I shall be obliged.
Naturally, in my present position I am so incapable of forming any opinion of that management that I must consider myself fortunate, after all the constant tribulations which I had to suffer in this connexion, if you, dearest Anton, will continue to consider yourself the owner of that business, and, after you have taken over its burdens, also proceed with it entirely according to your own good judgment.
So please look upon my request for some explanation as only a sign of the interest which I take in the success of this business, in regard to which my only wish is that in time it may give you some degree of compensation.
Finally, permit me to inquire whether it has been possible for you to arrange to pay (to Mme. Ritter) the amount of the debt to Hiebendahl, or whether — in view of the comparatively small profits — the promise made last year will have to be retracted, because in the latter case I must pay the debt out of my small allowance.
How I should like to close these lines with the expectation of seeing you soon again, and yet I must ever remain without hope of that! So I console myself with working, as much as my continually poor health permits, and I remain, with the feeling of deepest and heartiest obligation, your ever grateful and devoted
Friend
Rich. Wagner
Source: The Letters of Richard Wagner to Anton Pusinelli, trans. and ed. Elbert Lenrow (Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), No. 15