Suddenly, without hearing or seeing anything, the father felt the straw move under his feet; he turned mechanically, and gave a great cry on seeing his little daughter stretched motionless on the ground.

She was dead. Her little corset was unsewn and her chemise burnt.

But of all the fantastic actions of lightning, the most extraordinary and incomprehensible is the mania it has for undressing its victims, and leaving them dead or fainting in the primitive costume of our first parents--or in a dress too simple to be allowed by our civilized customs.

This deplorable and quite inexplicable habit has given lightning a large scientific _dossier_, from which we have already cited examples in the first chapter, and from which we will again extract some fragments.

Near Angers, on May 12, 1901, a farm lad named Rousteau, aged twenty-three, was killed by lightning in the middle of the fields. The corpse was found nearly naked.

On June 29, 1869, at Pradettes (Ariege), the Mayor was unfortunate enough to take shelter under a very high poplar. Soon after he had done so, there was a burst of lightning which split the tree and struck him. In one of its diabolical freaks it entirely undressed him, throwing his various garments round about him, reduced to rags, with the exception of one shoe.

In June, 1903, at Saint-Laurent-la-Gatine, thunder broke over M.

Fromentin while he was working a plough drawn by three horses.

Lightning killed the leader, and completely undressed M. Fromentin after burning his hat.

The same day, at Limoges, a farm servant named Barcelot was struck under an oak. His corpse was completely naked and he had a severe wound on his left side.

On August 20 of the same year, a violent storm burst over the Isle of Re. A farmer, who was on his way to the station at Finaud, was struck fifty yards from his own house. The lightning removed all his clothes.

In 1894 the keeper of the Commune of Saint-Cyr-en-Val, near Orleans, was struck while on his rounds; the fluid deprived him of his clothes and removed all the nails from one of his shoes.

On July 1903, at Aseras, near Nice, during a violent storm with hailstones 350 grammes in weight, a Mme. Blanc was on her way to meet a servant who was in the fields. She had only taken a few steps when she was struck by lightning and completely undressed. Her body was uninjured, but the poor woman became dumb.

How fantastic and extravagant it is! It is impossible to a.s.sign any rule to the capricious advance of lightning.

How are we to explain the following facts of nature?

One night in April, at about 6 p.m., near Ajaccio, a peasant named J.

B. Pantaloni was leaving the fields and hurrying home to escape from a storm. He had hardly reached his house when it was set on fire by an electric discharge, and the unfortunate man was killed dead and carbonized. At the same time his two sons and a daughter, who were in the same room, were completely undressed and their garments disappeared. These last were not hurt in any way.

Very often clothes, which have been torn and tattered, are taken a long way off.

On October 1, 1868, seven people were seeking shelter under an enormous beech near the village of Bonello in the Commune of Perret (Cotes-du-Nord), when, suddenly, lightning struck the tree and killed one of them. The six others were thrown to the ground without being much hurt. The clothes of the one who had been struck were reduced to tatters; several of these were found hanging on the branches of the tree.

One day a workman was sheltering under the shed of a kiosque in which there were five men playing cards. He was grazed by lightning. The fluid, after having pa.s.sed between the players without hurting them, left the kiosque, and removed a shoe from the poor workman, who was petrified with fright. They searched for the shoe which had been confiscated by the fulminant matter, but in vain.

Moreover, lightning seems to have a special predilection for shoes; it seldom respects them, even when it spares the other garments. Sabots, shoes, and even boots are removed, unsewn, un-nailed, cut to pieces, and thrown far away with extraordinary violence. Very often the discharge penetrates into the human body by the head and leaves it by the feet.

During a violent storm (June 8, 1868) a workman was pa.s.sing near the Jardin des Plantes, when he felt a great oppression on his stomach. He was then knocked down roughly by an irresistible force, and deprived of the use of his senses at the moment of the fall. He was picked up and taken home, and on being examined, his body bore no trace of a wound, and he escaped with a fright. But some days after, when he had recovered from the shock, he remembered that he had worn boots at the time of the accident. These had disappeared, the lightning had stolen them from him, though it acted from a distance. The boots were found in the street, and the soles had the nails completely removed, although they were screwed in and the boots were nearly new.

On May 31, 1904, at Villemontoire (Aisne), a workman was killed on a hay-c.o.c.k, his clothes were reduced to fragments, and his shoes were not to be found. Two other workmen were wounded, and the c.o.c.k was set on fire.

On May 11, 1893, lightning broke over the Commune of Chapelle-en-Blezy (Haute-Marne). A young shepherd, who was watching his flock in the fields, was knocked over by the fluid and lost consciousness. When he came to himself he found that his sabots and cap had disappeared.

Arago states that a workman was struck under a pavilion, and that the pieces of his hat were found embedded in the ceiling.

Biot gives the case of a hat which was flung ten paces without a breath of wind.

We could multiply these very curious observations, but we must restrain ourselves so as to remain within the limits of this little book. Did I not say just now that lightning has sometimes--though very rarely--exercised a beneficial influence on sick people it strikes?

Yes; we hear of several cases where thunder has shown itself a rival to the n.o.blest disciples of Esculapius, and where it has worked veritable miracles.

For instance, a person who had been paralyzed thirty-eight years, suddenly, at the age of forty-four, recovered the use of her legs, after a stroke of lightning.

A paralytic had been taking the curative waters of Tunbridge Wells for twenty years, when the spark touched him and cured him of his terrible infirmity.

Lightning has sometimes worked marvels on the blind, deaf, and dumb, to whom it restores sight, hearing, and speech.

A man who had the whole of his left side paralyzed from infancy was struck in his room on August 10, 1807. He lost consciousness for twenty minutes, but after some days he gradually and permanently recovered the use of his limbs. A weakness of the right eye also disappeared, and the invalid could write without spectacles. On the other hand, he became deaf.

Indeed, if we are to believe stories which appear to be authentic, a cold, a tumour, and rheumatism have been cured by lightning. We have given an example in our first chapter.

It is impossible to explain in what manner the subtle fluid accomplishes these wonderful cures. Are they to be attributed to the shock, to a general upheaval which brings back the circulation to its normal course? Or are we to attribute to the electric substance--still unknown to physicians and physiologists--an action capable of overcoming the most inveterate evils?

The science of Therapeutics already makes excellent use of the electricity of the machines. Can we, then, marvel much that lightning should rival our feeble electric resources? No! What a number of services might it not render if it were not for its mad independence!

What an amount of lost power there is in the gleam of lightning!

As a matter of fact, we owe no grat.i.tude to lightning. There are too many miseries for a few happy results. The balance is really too unequal.

Some lightning strokes have proved veritable disasters, on account of the number of the victims and the havoc which has been caused.

The most extraordinary of these are the following:--

On a feast-day lightning penetrated into a church near Carpentras.

Fifty people were killed or wounded or rendered imbecile.

On July 2, 1717, lightning struck a church at Seidenburg, near Zittau, during the service; forty-eight people were killed or wounded.

On June 26, 1783, lightning struck the church of Villars-le-Terroy, when its bells were being rung; it killed eleven people, and wounded thirteen.

On board the sloop _Sapho_, in February, 1820, six men were killed by a stroke of lightning and fourteen seriously wounded.

On board the ship _Repulse_, near the sh.o.r.es of Catalonia, on April 13, 1813, lightning killed eight men in the rigging and wounded nine, of whom several succ.u.mbed.

On July 11, 1857, three hundred people were a.s.sembled in the church at Grosshad, a small village, two miles from Duren, when lightning struck it; one hundred people were wounded, thirty of them seriously. Six were killed, and they were six hardy men.

Early in July, 1865, lightning fell on the territory of Coray (Finisterre) in a warren where sixteen people were weeding. Six men and a child were killed by the same stroke, and three others were severely wounded. Several were stripped naked, their garments being scattered in rags over the ground; their shoes were cut to pieces and all broken. A curious point is that the workers were struck at a distance of 100 yards from each other.

On July 12, 1887, at Mount Pleasant (Tennessee, U.S.A.), lightning killed nine people who were taking refuge under an oak during a storm.

These formed part of a procession which was conducting a negress to her last home.

Here is another very curious and complex case--

On the last Sunday in June, 1867, during Vespers, lightning struck a church at Dance, Canton of Saint-Germain-Laval (Loire). A deathlike silence succeeded the noise of the explosion, then a cry was heard, then a hundred more. The cure, who thought that he alone had received the whole electric discharge--and was in reality unhurt--left his place, where he was enveloped in a cloud of dust and smoke, and spoke to his parishioners from the Communion rails, to rea.s.sure them. "It is nothing," he said. "Keep your places; there is no harm done."

He was mistaken; twenty-five to thirty people had been more or less struck. Four were carried away unconscious, but the worst treated of all was the treasurer. In raising him they perceived that his eyes were open, but dull and veiled, and he gave no sign of life. His clothes were burnt, and his shoes, which were torn and full of blood, were removed from his feet.

The Monstrance, which had been exposed, had been thrown down on the ground, and was battered and pierced in the stem, and the Host had disappeared. The priest searched for it for a long time, and finally discovered it on the altar in the middle of the corporal, on a thick bed of rubbish.

Three or four yards of the wainscoting of the choir had burnt into atoms. Outside, the arrow of the belfry had been carried off, and its slates were scattered about in the neighbouring fields.