An allusion to a type of light literature which was widely read at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century; many of its characters were knights, robbers and ghosts, e.g., Abällino, der grosse Bandit by Heinrich Daniel Zschokke published in 1793, and Rinaldo Rinaldini, der Räuberhauptmann by Christian August Vulpius (1797).