The Life of the Spider 



Indelicate colleague, who has been awaiting 

 the completion of the work, appears and hypo- 

 critically offers his services. The other well 

 knows that, in this case, help and services, 

 besides being quite unnecessary, will soon 

 mean partition and dispossession; and he ac- 

 cepts the enforced collaboration without en- 

 thusiasm. But, so that their respective rights 

 may be clearly marked, the legal owner in- 

 variably retains his original place, that is to 

 say, he pushes the ball with his forehead, 

 whereas the compulsory guest, on the other 

 side, pulls it towards him. And thus it jogs 

 along between the two gossips, amid inter- 

 minable vicissitudes, flurried falls, grotesque 

 tumbles, till it reaches the place chosen to 

 receive the treasure and to become the ban- 

 queting-hall. On arriving, the owner sets 

 about digg'ng out the refectory, while the 

 sponger pretends to go innocently to sleep on 

 the top of the bolus. The excavation be- 

 comes visibly wider and deeper; and soon the 

 first dung-beetle dives bodily into it. This 

 is the moment for which the cunning aux- 

 iliary was waiting. He nimbly scrambles 

 down from the blissful eminence and, push- 

 ing it with all the energy that a bad con- 



12 



