To rear the Clotho is not an arduous undertaking; we are not obliged to take the heavy flagstone, on which the dwelling is built, away with us.  A very simple operation suffices.  I loosen the fastenings with my pocket-knife.  The Spider has such stay-at-home ways that she very rarely makes off.  Besides, I use the utmost discretion in my rape of the house.  And so I carry away the building, together with its owner, in a paper bag.

The flat stones, which are too heavy to move and which would occupy too much room upon my table, are replaced either by deal disks, which once formed part of cheese-boxes, or by round pieces of cardboard.  I arrange each silken hammock under one of these by itself, fastening the angular projections, one by one, with strips of gummed paper.  The whole stands on three short pillars and gives a very fair imitation of the underrock shelter in the form of a small dolmen.  Throughout this operation, if you are careful to avoid shocks and jolts, the Spider remains indoors.  Finally, each apparatus is placed under a wire-gauze, bell-shaped cage, which stands in a dish filled with sand.

We can have an answer by the next morning.  If, among the cabins swung from the ceilings of the deal or cardboard dolmens, there be one that is all dilapidated, that was seriously knocked out of shape at the time of removal, the Spider abandons it during the night and instals herself elsewhere, sometimes even on the trellis-work of the wire cage.

The new tent, the work of a few hours, attains hardly the diameter of a two-franc piece.  It is built, however, on the same principles as the old manor-house and consists of two thin sheets laid one above the other, the upper one flat and forming a tester, the lower curved and pocket-shaped.  The texture is extremely delicate:  the least trifle would deform it, to the detriment of the available space, which is already much reduced and only just sufficient for the recluse.

Well, what has the Spider done to keep the gossamer stretched, to steady it and to make it retain its greatest capacity?  Exactly what our static treatises would advise her to do:  she has ballasted her structure, she has done her best to lower its centre of gravity.  From the convex surface of the pocket hang long chaplets of grains of sand strung together with slender silken cords.  To these sandy stalactites, which form a bushy beard, are added a few heavy lumps hung separately and lower down, at the end of a thread.  The whole is a piece of ballast-work, an apparatus for ensuring equilibrium and tension.