Description
The Rider on the White Horse
The story that I have to tell came to my knowledge more than half a
century ago in the house of my great-grandmother, the wife of Senator
Feddersen, when, sitting close up to her armchair one day, I was busy
reading a number of some magazine bound in blue cardboard, either
the Leipziger or Pappes Hamburger Lesefrüchte, I have forgotten
which. I still recall with a tremor how the old lady of more than
eighty years would now and then pass her soft hand caressingly over
her great-grandchild’s hair. She herself, and that day, have long been
buried and I have sought in vain for those old pages, so I can just as
little vouch for the truth of the facts as defend them if anyone should
question them. Only one thing I can affirm, that although no outward
circumstance has since revived them in my mind they have never vanished
from my memory.
On an October afternoon, in the third decade of our century–thus the
narrator began his tale–I was riding in very bad weather along a dike
in northern Friesland. For more than an hour I had been passing, on the
left, a bleak marsh from which all the cattle had already gone, and, on
the right, uncomfortably near, the marsh of the North Sea. A traveler
along the dike was supposed to be able to see islets and islands; I
saw nothing however but the yellow-gray waves that dashed unceasingly
against the dike with what seemed like roars of fury, sometimes
splashing me and the horse with dirty foam; in the background eerie
twilight in which earth could not be distinguished from sky, for the
moon, which had risen and was now in its second quarter, was covered
most of the time by driving clouds. It was icy cold. My benumbed hands
could scarcely hold the reins and I did not blame the crows and gulls
that, cawing and shrieking, allow
Product ID: 9781776772483
Sku: 9781776772483
