The _Gazette de Cologne_ gave the following case in June, 1867:-- At Czempin, a young girl of eighteen was struck by lightning while she was working near a hearth. She remained unconscious, in spite of all the efforts made to revive her. At last, acting on the advice of an old man, they placed her in a freshly dug ditch, and covered her body with earth, but in such a way as to avoid stifling her. After some hours she recovered consciousness, and was restored to health. Sometimes lightning amuses itself nicely and innocently. It mixes in the society of men without doing them harm, or leaving any remembrance but a great fear. One day lightning entered by the chimney into the middle of a lively dance at M. Van Gestien's, the innkeeper at Flone (Belgium). At the sight of it the dancers were petrified with terror, and not one could try and escape. But they misunderstood the intentions of the lightning, which were of the most straightforward; it only wanted to be a spoil-sport. It also had the good taste to depart quietly. After the first excitement a profound stupefaction seized hold of the persons present; they were all transformed into niggers. The lightning had swept the chimney, and cast the soot into the ball-room, powdering all the faces and toilettes. Lightning might be the daughter of goblins rather than a messenger from Olympus. The following facts might confirm this impression:-- At Bayonne, on June 6, 1873, lightning knocked over a gas-burner, and threw a person down, after making her turn round three times. A family of twelve were gathered together at a table, sixty yards, at least, from the point where it burst. They were all knocked down, but without sustaining any injury. During a violent storm, lightning entered a country house by the chimney; it lifted two big stones from the hearth, and carried them over to near the head of a child who was asleep, and placed one on each side, without grazing it or hurting the child. And this same lightning, whose almost maternal delicacy is quite exquisite, entered another time, also by the chimney, into a house, hit a man savagely on the head, wounded him severely, and left him dead in the middle of a pool of blood. Then it took a quantity of this blood which was accumulated round his head, and went and stuck it on the ceiling of the higher story. A child who was present at this tragic scene was unhurt. In August, 1901, an electric spark penetrated into a house in the village of Porri, near Ajaccio, and started to make the tour of the property. First it visited the second-floor rooms, without doing much damage there; then it went down to the first floor, where there were two young girls, turned them round, and burnt their legs. It continued on its course as far as the cellar, where its dazzling brightness terrified three young children who had taken refuge there. It spared two, but burned the third rather severely.