and pursued the Spider direct, in her
own house, instead of remaining outside, going from one door to the
other. With such swiftness and dexterity as hers, it seemed to me
impossible that the stroke should fail: the quarry moved clumsily, a
little sideways, like a Crab. I judged it to be an easy matter; the
Pompilus thought it highly dangerous. To-day I am of her opinion: if
she had entered the leafy tube, the mistress of the house would have
operated on her neck and the huntress would have become the quarry.

Years passed and the paralyser of the Spiders still refused to reveal
her secret; I was badly served by circumstances, could find no leisure,
was absorbed in unrelenting preoccupations. At length, during my last
year at Orange, the light dawned upon me. My garden was enclosed by an
old wall, blackened and ruined by time, where, in the chinks between the
stones, lived a population of Spiders, represented more particularly by
Segestria perfidia. This is the common Black Spider, or Cellar Spider.
She is deep black all over, excepting the mandibles, which are a
splendid metallic green. Her two poisoned daggers look like a product of
the metal-worker's art, like the finest bronze. In any mass of abandoned
masonry there is not a quiet corner, not a hole the size of one's
finger, in which the Segestria does not set up house. Her web is a
widely flaring funnel, whose open end, at most a span across, lies
spread upon the surface of the wall, where it is held in place by
radiating threads. This conical surface is continued by a tube which
runs into a hole in the wall. At the end is the dining-room to which the
Spider retires to devour at her ease her captured prey.

With her two hind-legs stuck into the tube to obtain a purchase and the
six others spread around the orifice, the better to perceive on every
side the quiver which gives the signal of a capture, the Segestria
waits motionless, at the entrance of her funnel, for an insect to become
entangled in the snare. Large Flies, Drone-flies, dizzily grazing some
thread of the snare with their wings, are her usual victims. At the
first flutter of the netted Fly, the Spider runs or even leaps forward,
but she is now secured by a cord which escapes from the spinnerets and
which has its end fastened to the silken tube. This prevents her from
falling as she darts along a vertical surface. Bitten at the back of the
head, the Drone-fly is dead in a moment; and the Segestria carri