‘Lightning,’ Professor Arago tells his story, ‘having struck a rather thick rod erected on a Mr. Raven’s house, in Carolina, United States, afterwards ran along a wire carried down the outside of the house to connect the rod on the roof with an iron bar stuck in the ground. The lightning in its descent melted all the part of the wire extending from the roof to the ground-storey, without injuring in the least the wall down which the wire was carried. But at a point intermediate between the ceiling and the floor of the lower storey things were changed: from thence to the ground the wire was not melted, and at the spot where the fusion ceased the lightning altered its course altogether, and, striking off at right angles, made a rather large hole in the wall and entered the kitchen. The cause of this singular divergence was readily perceived, when it was remarked that the hole in the wall was precisely on a level with the upper part of the barrel of a gun which had been left standing on the floor leaning against the wall. The gun barrel was uninjured, but the trigger was broken, and a little further on some damage was done in the fire-place.’ Commenting upon this case, Professor Arago goes on: ‘Here the lightning went off horizontally through the wall, in order to strike a fowling-piece standing upright in the kitchen. How much injury might not have resulted from this lateral movement, if the lightning had not had to traverse a thick wall?’ Consequently, he argues, Voltaire is right in his jocular-oracular declaration about the perils of indoor lightning conductors, in their being ‘great lords’ dangerous to approach.