"Let us go in, I am frightened," she cried, running to take refuge between her parents.
"We will go in immediately, but we must finish binding before the rain comes on."
"Then I will beg of the Good God to keep the thunder from us."
"Do."
And while the father and mother continued their work, the child went down on her knees, and with her hands over her eyes commenced her prayer.
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 (Ariège), 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.