which was there, were well boxed and beaten; but
having taken up a Calvinist Bible, they received no harm. Two men of
Constance having entered the bookseller's shop from sheer curiosity,
one of them was immediately thrown down upon the ground, and the other
ran away as fast as he could. Another person, who had come in the same
way from curiosity, was punished for his presumption, by having a
quantity of water thrown upon him. A young girl of Ausburg, a relation
of the Sieur Lahart, printer, was chased away with violent blows, and
pursued even to the neighboring house, where she entered.

At last the hauntings ceased, on the 8th of February. On that day the
spectre opened the shop door, went in, deranged a few articles, went
out, shut the door, and from that time nothing more was seen or heard
of it.

Footnotes:

[584] Homer de Hectore, Iliad XXIV. 411.

[585] Plutarch de Alexandro in ejus Vita.

[586] About the year 1680; he died after the year 1694.

[587] Causes Celebres, tom. viii. p. 585.

[588] Plin. Hist. Natur. lib. vii. c. 52.

[589] St. Gregor. Turon. de Gloria Martyr. c. 95.

[590] I have touched upon this matter in a particular Dissertation at
the Head of the Gospel of St. John.

[591] Plato, de Republ. lib. x.; Clemens Alexandr. lib. v. Stromat.

[592] Phleg. de Mirabilis, c. 3.

[593] Plutarch, de Sera Numinis Vindicta.

[594] 1 Cor. xiii. 2.

[595] Aug. lib. xiv. de Civit. Dei, c. 24.

CHAPTER XLIX.

INSTANCE OF A MAN NAMED CURMA WHO WAS SENT BACK INTO THE WORLD.

St. Augustine relates on this subject,[596] that a countryman named
Curma, who held a small place in the village of Tullia, near Hippoma,
having fallen sick, remained for some days senseless and speechless,
having just respiration enough left to prevent their burying him. At
the end of several days he began to open his eyes, and sent to ask
what they were about in the house of another peasant of the same
place, and like himself named Curma. They brought him back word, that
he had just expired at the very moment that he himself had recovered
and was resuscitated from his deep slumber.

Then he began to talk, and related what he had seen and heard; that it
was not Curma the _curial_,[597] but Curma the blacksmith, who ought
to have been brought; he added, that among those whom he had seen
treated in different ways, he had recognized some of his deceased
acquaintance, and other ecclesiastics, who were still alive, wh