That Grimmelshausen died a Romanist is pretty clear from the entry of his death quoted above; nor is it likely that a Protestant could have held the office of Schultheiss under the Bishop of Strassburg. There is also extant a curious dialogue ascribed to Grimmelshausen in which Simplicissimus's arguments against changing his religion are combated and finally overthrown by a certain Bonarnicus, who effects his complete conversion. It is far from improbable that the account of his rescue from sinful indifference at Einsiedel which Simplicissimus gives (bk. v., chap. 2)--of course apart from the miraculous incident of the attack on him by the unclean spirit--roughly represents the experience of his author. That the latter had been brought up a Protestant we simply assume from the fact that Simplicissimus is understood to have been so; the first indication which we have of a change in his opinions being his exclamation of "Jesus Maria!" (bk. iii., chap. 20), which draws upon him the suspicions of the pastor at Lippstadt. But Papist or not, our author's superstition is unmistakable. It was indeed a time, like all periods of intense human misery, in which men, it might almost be said, turned in despair to the powers of hell because they had lost all faith in those of heaven. That numbers of the unhappy wretches who suffered in their thousands for witchcraft during the first period of the war actually believed themselves in direct communication with the devil is certain. The Bishop of Würzburg's fortnightly "autos-da-fé" were only stopped when some of the victims denounced the prelate himself as their accomplice, apparently believing it. Grimmelshausen is ready to believe anything. His description of the Witches' Sabbath is that of a scene which he is firmly convinced is a possible one; and he stoutly defends by a multitude of preposterous stories the reasonableness of such conviction ("Simplicissimus," bk. ii., chaps. 17, 18). But among soldiers the most widely spread superstition was that concerned with invulnerability. Not only separate individuals, but whole bodies of troops were supposed to be "frozen," or proof, at all events, against leaden bullets. Christian of Brunswick actually employed his ducal brother's workers in glass to make balls of that material to be used against Tilly's troops, who were credited with this supernatural property; and when the small fortress of Rogäz, near Dessau, was captured by Mansfeld in 1626, the assailants were forbidden to use their fire-arms as useless; the members of the garrison, being wizards all, were clubbed to death with hedge-stakes or the butt-ends of musquets. In all probability this superstition arose mainly from observation of the very small penetrating power of the ammunition of the time. Oliver (bk. iv., chap. 14) is merely bruised on the forehead by a bullet fired a few paces off: and bullets then weighed ten to the pound. It is true that he has, as it seems, been