With his legs and especially with his palpi, or feelers, he teases the buxom gossip, who answers with curious skips and bounds.  Gripping a thread with her front tarsi, or fingers, she turns, one after the other, a number of back somersaults, like those of an acrobat on the trapeze.  Having done this, she presents the under-part of her paunch to the dwarf and allows him to fumble at it a little with his feelers.  Nothing more:  it is done.

The object of the expedition is attained.  The whipper-snapper makes off at full speed, as though he had the Furies at his heels.  If he remained, he would presumably be eaten.  These exercises on the tight-rope are not repeated.  I kept watch in vain on the following evenings:  I never saw the fellow again.

When he is gone, the bride descends from the cable, spins her web and assumes the hunting-attitude.  We must eat to have silk, we must have silk to eat and especially to weave the expensive cocoon of the family.  There is therefore no rest, not even after the excitement of being married.

The Epeirae are monuments of patience in their lime-snare.  With her head down and her eight legs wide-spread, the Spider occupies the centre of the web, the receiving-point of the information sent along the spokes.  If anywhere, behind or before, a vibration occur, the sign of a capture, the Epeira knows about it, even without the aid of sight.  She hastens up at once.

Until then, not a movement:  one would think that the animal was hypnotized by her watching.  At most, on the appearance of anything suspicious, she begins shaking her nest.  This is her way of inspiring the intruder with awe.  If I myself wish to provoke the singular alarm, I have but to tease the Epeira with a bit of straw.  You cannot have a swing without an impulse of some sort.  The terror-stricken Spider, who wishes to strike terror into others, has hit upon something much better.  With nothing to push her, she swings with her floor of ropes.  There is no effort, no visible exertion.  Not a single part of the animal moves; and yet everything trembles.  Violent shaking proceeds from apparent inertia.  Rest causes commotion.

When calm is restored, she resumes her attitude, ceaselessly pondering the harsh problem of life: 

‘Shall I dine to-day, or not?’

Certain privileged beings, exempt from those anxieties, have food in abundance and need not struggle to obtain it.  Such is the Gentle, who swims blissfully in the broth of the putrefying adder.  Others—­and, by a strange irony of fate, these are generally the most gifted—­only manage to eat by dint of craft and patience.

You are of their company, O my industrious Epeirae!  So that you may dine, you spend your treasures of patience nightly; and often without result.  I sympathize with your woes, for I, who am as concerned as you about my daily bread, I also doggedly spread my net, the net for catching ideas, a more elusive and less substantial prize than the Moth.  Let us not lose heart.  The best part of life is not in the present, still less in the past; it lies in the future, the domain of hope.  Let us wait.