Phew. That was a close shave. The showman gave his mule a smack and the cart rumbled out of the small town. He had installed six lightning conductors on some beautiful houses. He was payed in cash. But then the rumour was spread that these contraptions were useless, even blasphemous and work of the devil. No, the burghers didn’t burn him on a stake like the colleague with the counting goat about 150 years ago. But the mayor called him a charlatan and a trickster. He ordered to put him in jail, to confiscate his purse and to destroy all his belongings. Thank God for the famous old professor from Göttingen, who was staying in the Golden Lion. He had a way with words and rushed to help . He impressed the citizens with reports of remote farmhouses which would have been reduced to ashes without the lightning conductors. The professor even called him a ‘scientific salesman’‚ a ‘foot-soldier of progress’ and an ‘enlightened technologist par excellence’. After this lecture the showman was swamped with orders. But he preferred to clear off. Perhaps he should cut out the performance with the ghosts and the sudden electrical strikes directly out of another world. For some weeks, at least. Optimistically, he trudged along, the ideas of the Enlightenment in his heart and on his back.