German Fiction · Theodor Fontane
THE RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE
"The thanks of a younger generation that Jewe Manners had once promised the builder of the dike he never received, as you have seen. For that is the way, sir: Socrates they gave poison to drink, and our Lord Christ they nailed to the cross. That can't be done so easily nowadays, but--making a saint out of a tyrant or a bad, stubborn priest, or turning a good fellow, just because he towers above us by a head, into a ghost or a monster--that's still done every day." When the serious little man had said that, he got up and listened into the night. "Some change must have gone on outside," he said, and drew the woolen covering from the window. There was bright moonlight. "Look," he went on, "there the overseers are coming back; but they are scattering, they are going home. There must have been a break in the dike on the other shore; the water has sunk." I looked out beside him. The windows up here were above the edge of the dike; everything was just as he had said. I took up my glass and drank the rest: "I thank you for this evening. I think now we can sleep in peace." "We can," replied the little gentleman; "I wish you heartily a good night's sleep."
As I walked downstairs, I met the dikemaster in the hall; he wanted to take home a map that he had left in the tavern. "All over!" he said. "But our schoolmaster, I suppose, has told you a fine story--he belongs to the enlighteners!" "He seems to be a sensible man." "Yes, yes, surely; but you can't distrust your own eyes. And over there on the other side--I said it would--the dike is broken." I shrugged my shoulders. "You will have to think that over in bed. Good night, dikemaster." The next morning, in the golden sunlight that shone over wide ruin, I rode down to the city on the Hauke-Haien dike.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.