was unable to rest, owing to the presence of
a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed. The Clotho is quite as fastidious. Her
couch is more delicate than swan's-down and whiter than the fleece of the
clouds where brood the summer storms. It is the ideal blanket. Above is
a canopy or tester of equal softness. Between the two nestles the
Spider, short-legged, clad in sombre garments, with five yellow favours
on her back.

Rest in this exquisite retreat demands perfect stability, especially on
gusty days, when sharp draughts penetrate beneath the stone. This
condition is admirably fulfilled. Take a careful look at the habitation.
The arches that gird the roof with a balustrade and bear the weight of
the edifice are fixed to the slab by their extremities. Moreover, from
each point of contact, there issues a cluster of diverging threads that
creep along the stone and cling to it throughout their length, which
spreads afar. I have measured some fully nine inches long. These are so
many cables; they represent the ropes and pegs that hold the Arab's tent
in position. With such supports as these, so numerous and so
methodically arranged, the hammock cannot be torn from its bearings save
by the intervention of brutal methods with which the Spider need not
concern herself, so seldom do they occur.

Another detail attracts our attention: whereas the interior of the house
is exquisitely clean, the outside is covered with dirt, bits of earth,
chips of rotten wood, little pieces of gravel. Often there are worse
things still: the exterior of the tent becomes a charnel-house. Here,
hung up or embedded, are the dry carcasses of Opatra, Asidae and other
Tenebrionidae {39} that favour underrock shelters; segments of Iuli, {40}
bleached by the sun; shells of Pupae, {41} common among the stones; and,
lastly, Snail-shells, selected from among the smallest.

These relics are obviously, for the most part, table-leavings, broken
victuals. Unversed in the trapper's art, the Clotho courses her game and
lives upon the vagrants who wander from one stone to another. Whoso
ventures under the slab at night is strangled by the hostess; and the
dried-up carcass, instead of being flung to a distance, is hung to the
silken wall, as though the Spider wished to make a bogey-house of her
home. But this cannot be her aim. To act like the ogre who hangs his
victims from the castle battlements is the worst way to disarm suspicion
in the passers-by whom