The Rider on the White Horse

What I am about to tell I learned nearly half a century ago in the house of my great-grandmother, old Madame Fedderson, widow of the senator, while I was sitting beside her armchair, busy reading a magazine bound in blue pasteboard—I don't remember whether it was a copy of the “Leipzig” or of “Pappes Hamburger Lesefrüchte.” I still remember with a shudder how meanwhile the light hand of the past eighty-year-old woman glided tenderly over the hair of her great-grandson.