‘You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and from Jupiter Tonans,’ laughed I; ‘you mere man who come here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered and the days of our lives. In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man’s earth.’

‘Impious wretch!’ foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the rainbow beamed, ‘I will publish your infidel notions.’

‘Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm.’

The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round his eyes as the storm-rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me, his tri-forked thing at my heart.

I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after him.

But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbours, the lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.