«In spite of all these very practical suggestions the concert at Graz did not take place. The Busonis were rescued by the kindness of Kienzl, who collected money for them, and after May had reduced them to the lowest depths of despair, theywere able to move inJune to Cilli, a picturesque little old town founded by the Romans in the mountains to the south of Marburg. Glad indeed they were to leave Klagenfurt, where they felt themselves surrounded by enemies. But Ferruccio, at any rate, left one friend behind there - whom he was to find again after forty years. Klagenfurt left an impression on Ferruccio's memory which he never forgot, as the following episode will show. In 1912 he was at Hamburg for the production of his opera "Die Brautwahl". After a morning's rehearsal he went with friends to a restaurant. Conversation turned on some musician who had failed to fulfil the promise of his youth; he was a conductor in some remote provincial town, some one thought - it might be Klagenfurt. Klagenfurt! The name made the company laugh; it stood for the far end of the world, and probably most of them had no very clear idea where Klagenfurt was. Busoni, who had been sitting with his head in his hands, lost in meditation, suddenly looked up as if he had seen a ghost. 'Klagenfurt!' he said, almost with a groan - 'Klagen-furt! who spoke of Klagenfurt?' The others fell silent, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to shudder; they looked at Busoni and waited for the next prophetic word. 'Klagenfurt!' He prolonged the syllables, as if to suggest what they mean - 'the ford of wailing'. 'Did you ever play there?' 'Did I ever play there? Klagenfurt! It brings back all my childhood!' He seemed as if in a trance. 'There's a dragon there.' Most of the others thought he must be going mad. One guest, however, had been to Klagenfurt, and remembered the 'Lindwurm' - a huge dragon in green slate, set up in the sixteenth century to commemorate a plague. An ordinary mortal having seen the dragon too, contact was restored; the company felt themselves on safe ground again, and Busoni for a moment lifted the curtain of memory. The sentences came out slow and detached. 'I was there with my parents; I was twelve years old; I was a wonder-child, and everything turned on me. We were in a hotel there and had to stay for three months, because we had no money and could not pay the bill.' The vision faded, the curtain fell, and the company broke up.»