Very silently, in the dark of night, the priests of the Siena cathedral, directed by Abbé Toaldo, laid their iron rods along the walls of the building, but inside, planting them deep into the ground, and with the pointed summit only a few feet above the highest point of the steeple, so as to be scarcely perceptible from below by the naked eye. Still the secret of what had been done could not be entirely kept from the multitude. Some of the workmen, engaged in the operation of fixing the iron rods to the inner walls and steeple of the cathedral, whispered about what they had been doing, trembling at the evil consequences of their work, notwithstanding having received full absolution from their employers. Murmurs were now heard everywhere, and there were signs of a popular outbreak, just when one of the many thunderstorms regularly visiting the mountain city crept over it on April 18, 1777. Portentously the black clouds laid themselves thicker and thicker over the high cathedral, till all the people of Siena crept forth from their houses, awaiting in breathless expectation the terrors to come. Then the dark masses discharged their fiery streams; flash followed flash, till one, a long hissing tongue of flame, fell down upon the cathedral steeple, distinctly visible to thousands of beholders. A few minutes after, a ray of sunshine pierced the dark clouds, and to the bewildering astonishment of the masses, the cathedral was standing there absolutely unhurt. As if to exhibit its wonderful power, the gilded point of the lightning conductor stood out brilliantly in the sun, pointing in radiant silence up to heaven. ‘Maraviglia, maraviglia!’ cried people and priests in chorus. High mass was held forthwith in the wonderfully preserved cathedral, and on the same day the magistrates of Siena went into the town hall and had a record made in the book containing the annals of the city, to make known to all posterity that their noble cathedral had just been preserved from destruction by the astounding influence of an ‘heretical rod.’ Though not in the least intended to be sarcastic, the irony could not have been more complete.