These atrocious events never happen, I am confident, in climates where ease and abundance do not deprave their natural disposition. But in our well-peopled countries, with game very rare, and competition of extreme violence, these unfortunates act towards one another like the wretched castaways on the raft of the Medusa.
A cruel tyrant, the stomach, dominates over all nature, and vanquishes even love. Passion, in an anxious and restless being like the spider, is very mistrustful. At the height of his devotion, the lean and feeble male dares only approach the majestic lady with a timid reverence and the utmost reserve. He advances, he retires, he watches; he seems to ask himself if he has at all succeeded in subduing the haughty creature. He resorts to the timid methods of a slow magnetism, and especially to an extreme patience. He puts little faith in the first signs, and does not willingly yield his confidence. And, finally, when the adored object shows herself sensible of his sincerity, and grows ardent in her expansion of soul, he does not so wholly trust in her but what he will escape, and fly with all his speed, at some sudden impulse, and under the influence of an indescribable panic.
Such is the terrible idyl of the dusky lovers of our ceilings. Among our garden-spiders less suspicion seems to exist. Nature softens hearts, and rugged industrialism itself grows smoother in rustic life. We see some upon our trees which behave tolerably well to their husbands, and do not too often remember that they are competitors in the chase. They permit them to reside in the same locality, although a little apart, and keeping them at a distance. A light partition separates them. The princess consents that he may live under her roof, and on the ground-floor, while she lives on the first story,—keeping him below and in subjection, so that he may not presume to think himself the king, but only the prince consort, and the husband of the queen.
Have they any sympathies beyond their own race? So some authorities have asserted, and I believe it. They are isolated from us far less than the true insects. They live in our houses, have an interest in knowing us, and seem to observe us. They pay great attention to voices and sounds, and have a marvellous perception of them. If they have not the insect-organs of hearing (which would seem to be the antennæ), it is because they are all antennæ. Their excessive vigilance, and the nervous irradiation which makes itself felt everywhere among them, endow them with the keenest receptivity.
Much has been said about the musical spider of Pellisson. Another and less-known anecdote is not less striking. One of those little victims which are trained into virtuosi before they are ripe of age,—Berthome, illustrious in 1800,—owed his astonishing successes to the savage confinement in which he was forced to work. At eight he astounded and stupefied his hearers by his mastery of the violin. In his perpetual solitude he had a comrade whom no one suspected,—a spider. It was lodged at first in a quiet corner, but it gave itself license to advance from the corner to the music-stand, from the music-stand to the child, even climbing upon the mobile arm which held the bow. There, a palpitating and breathless amateur, it paused and listened. It was an audience in itself. The artist needed nothing more to fill him with inspiration and double his energy.
Unfortunately the child had a stepmother, who, one day, introducing an amateur into the sanctuary, saw the sensible animal at its post. A blow from her slipper annihilated the auditory. The child fell swooning to the ground, was ill for three months, and died,—heartbroken!