In the fertile countries of the tropics, where game abounds, it lives with its fellows. Some are said to weave around a tree one immense net, common to all, whose avenues they guard in perfect agreement. Nay more: having frequent occasion to deal with powerful insects, and even little birds, they co-operate in the hour of peril, and lend each other, as it were, a helping hand.
But this gregarious mode of living is wholly exceptional, confined to certain species, and peculiarly favoured climates. Everywhere else the spider, through its organism and the fatality of its life, assumes the character of the hunter, of the savage, who, living upon uncertain prey, remains envious, mistrustful, exclusive, and solitary.
But remember that it does not resemble the ordinary hunter, who gets quit with his journeys, his exertions, and his activity. The spider's hunt costs it dearly, if I may venture to say so, and demands an incessant outlay. Every day, every hour, it must draw from its own substance the essential element of the network which is to provide it with food and renew that substance. Accordingly, it starves in order to nourish, and exhausts in order to recruit itself; it grows lean on the dubious hope of afterwards growing fat. Its life is a lottery, remitted to the risk of a thousand unforeseen contingencies. Hence, it cannot fail to develop into an unquiet creature, sympathizing but coldly with its kind, in whom it sees possible competitors,—in a word, it is a fatally egotistical animal. And were it not so, it would perish.
The worst of it is, as far as the poor creature is concerned, that it is profoundly ugly. It is not one of those which, ugly to the naked eye, are rehabilitated by the microscope. The overwhelming speciality of its career has the effect, as we see among men, of attenuating one limb, exaggerating another, and prevents anything like harmony: the blacksmith is frequently a hunchback. In the same manner the spider is pot-bellied. Nature has sacrificed everything to its function, its wants, and the industrial apparatus which will satisfy those wants. It is an artisan, a rope-maker, a spinner, and a weaver. Do not look at its figure, but at the product of its art. It is not only a spinner, but a spinning-mill.
Concentrated and circular, with eight feet around its body, and eight vigilant eyes in its head, it causes astonishment by the eccentric prominency of its enormous belly. An ignoble feature, wherein the careless observer reads the result of gormandising! Alas, it is just the contrary! This big belly is its workshop, its magazine, the pouch where the rope-maker carries in front of it the material of the thread which it winds and unwinds; but as it fills this pouch with nothing but its very substance, it enlarges only at the expense of itself, and by dint of extreme sobriety. And you shall often see it, though emaciated in every limb, retaining full and expanded the treasure which is the indispensable element of its labour, the hope of its industry, and its only chance of a future. A true type of the man of industry! "If I fast to-day," it says, "I shall eat perhaps to-morrow; but if my material runs short, all is over,—my stomach must rest and fast for ever!"
My first relations with the spider were nothing less than agreeable. In my poverty-blighted childhood, while I toiled alone (as I have said in my book on "The People") in the then ruinous and desolate printing-office of my father, the temporary workshop was in a kind of cellar, sufficiently well lighted,—being a cellar in the boulevard where my family resided, but on the ground-floor so far as concerned the adjoining street. Through a large grated window the mid-day sun obliquely lighted up the sombre case where I put together my little leaden letters. There, at the angle of the wall, I distinctly perceived a prudent spider, which, supposing the stray sunbeam would bring some imprudent fly for its breakfast, drew near my case. This sunbeam, falling not in its corner but nearer me, was a natural temptation to invite its closer approach. In spite of my innate disgust, I admired the progressive ratio of timid, slow, and prudent experiment by which it ascertained the character of him to whose mercy it virtually confided its very existence. It watched me closely with all its eight eyes, and propounded to itself the problem, "Is he, or is he not, an enemy?"
Without analyzing its figure, or very clearly distinguishing its eyes, I felt that I was observed and watched; and apparently this observation, in the long run, proved favourable to me. By the instinct of work, perhaps (which is very great in its species), it perceived that I was really a peaceful labourer, and that I was busy, like itself, in weaving my cobweb. However this may be, it abandoned its stratagems and precautions with a quick decision, as if adopting an adventurous and somewhat perilous step. Not without grace it descended upon its thread, and planted itself resolutely on our respective frontier—the edge of my case, favoured, at that moment, with a golden ray of the sickly sun.
I was divided between two sentiments. I confess that I did not relish so close an intimacy,—the figure of such a friend pleased me but little; on the other hand, this prudent and observant being, which certainly did not lavish its confidence, seemed to say to me: "Wherefore should I not enjoy a little of thy sun? So different in nature, we have nevertheless arrived together from our necessitous toil and cold obscurity at this sweet banquet of light. Let us take heart, and fraternize. This ray which you permit me to share, receive it from me, and preserve it. In another half century, it will kindle up your winter."
As the little black fairy said this in its own language, whispering low, very low—in fact, it could not be lower (for it is thus that fairies speak)—I marked the effect of it vaguely, and it slumbered in my mind. The circumstance, however, was recalled for a brief while some years ago; and again, after a long interval, it has been revived on this very day, when for the first time I record and explain it.