A meat chopper and a copper basin used for ladling water out of a pail, and attached to either end of the stove, were likewise thrown into the middle of the room. But the oddest part was that these two articles were fastened together, the twine which served to hang up the chopper being rolled round the handle of the basin. Finally, the flash divided, and zigzagged off, one part carrying off a piece of the oak jamb of the hall door, the other part piercing a hole above the stove in a mud wall. Through this it threw fragments of laths and mortar into a window eleven metres off, near which two people were sleeping. This little dance, in which so many and various articles took part, does not lack piquancy! This is how lightning joins in the National Fête of France! On July 14, 1884, in the village of Tourettes (Vaucluse), lightning struck a house, carrying off a corner of the roof. It knocked off the lower part of the roof, and broke through a wall at least fifty centimetres thick. In a press built half into the wall, and in which there were about fifteen bottles containing various kinds of liqueur, only one bottle of spirits was broken, and this was done in such a manner that no trace could ever be found either of the glass or the liquid. From thence it sprang to the pictures hanging above the head of a little girl of five, who was sound asleep. Three pictures were torn from their frames, engravings and mirrors were ground to powder, but the child was not hurt. Then the electric current made an opening in the ceiling, which was about forty-five centimetres thick, broke a great many tiles as it left the house, but soon returned by way of the chimney, three parts of which it demolished. Then it explored the kitchen on the ground floor, where there were three men by a fire. One, standing up, was thrown violently against the opposite wall; another was hurled against the door; the third, seated, was raised from his chair to a height of at least fifty centimetres, and then dropped. To crown all, the spark tore away half the butt-end of a gun, and carried it into the next room, where there were eleven people who got off with nothing worse than the fright. Then going up the chimney, it exploded at a height of 1·50 metre, throwing bits of plaster and of the pothanger in all directions. What frantic and almost childlike fury! Yet somewhere else the very brother of this ray may caress the little head of a sleeping child, and not do it the slightest harm; may scoop a hole in the little cot, and then depart quietly without giving any further cause for talk. Or this same lightning, terrible and ungovernable at times, will snatch something out of a person's hand with so much dexterity, one might almost say delicacy, that one would hardly dare to reproach him with his lack of ceremony.