fortune smile at last upon our perseverance, we shall see,
clinging to the lower surface of the stone which we have lifted, an
edifice of a weather-beaten aspect, shaped like an over-turned cupola and
about the size of half a tangerine orange. The outside is encrusted or
hung with small shells, particles of earth and, especially, dried
insects.

The edge of the cupola is scalloped into a dozen angular lobes, the
points of which spread and are fixed to the stone. In between these
straps is the same number of spacious inverted arches. The whole
represents the Ishmaelite's camel-hair tent, but upside down. A flat
roof, stretched between the straps, closes the top of the dwelling.

Then where is the entrance? All the arches of the edge open upon the
roof; not one leads to the interior. The eye seeks in vain; there is
nothing to point to a passage between the inside and the outside. Yet
the owner of the house must go out from time to time, were it only in
search of food; on returning from her expedition, she must go in again.
How does she make her exits and her entrances? A straw will tell us the
secret.

Pass it over the threshold of the various arches. Everywhere, the
searching straw encounters resistance; everywhere, it finds the place
rigorously closed. But one of the scallops, differing in no wise from
the others in appearance, if cleverly coaxed, opens at the edge into two
lips and stands slightly ajar. This is the door, which at once shuts
again of its own elasticity. Nor is this all: the Spider, when she
returns home, often bolts herself in, that is to say, she joins and
fastens the two leaves of the door with a little silk.

The Mason Mygale is no safer in her burrow, with its lid
undistinguishable from the soil and moving on a hinge, than is the Clotho
in her tent, which is inviolable by any enemy ignorant of the device. The
Clotho, when in danger, runs quickly home; she opens the chink with a
touch of her claw, enters and disappears. The door closes of itself and
is supplied, in case of need, with a lock consisting of a few threads. No
burglar, led astray by the multiplicity of arches, one and all alike,
will ever discover how the fugitive vanished so suddenly.

While the Clotho displays a more simple ingenuity as regards her
defensive machinery, she is incomparably ahead of the Mygale in the
matter of domestic comfort. Let us open her cabin. What luxury! We are
taught how a Sybarite of old