ARANEID^ — TRUE SPIDERS. 343 



diaal Wolsey and his retinue still haunt the palace in their 

 shape. ^ 



In running across the carpet in an evening, with the 

 shade cast from their large bodies by the light of the lamp 

 or candle, these " Cardinals" have been mistaken for mice, 

 and have occasioned no little alarm to some of the more 

 nervous inhabitants of the palace.'^ 



The story of the gigantic Spider found in the Church of 

 St. Eustace, at Paris, in Chambers' Miscellany, is related as 

 follows : It is told that the sexton of this church was sur- 

 prised at very often discovering a certain lamp extinguished 

 in the morning, notwithstanding it had been duly replenished 

 with oil the preceding evening. Curious to learn the cause 

 of this mysterious circumstance, he kept watch several even- 

 ings, and was at last gratified by the discovery. During the 

 night he observed a Spider, of enormous dimensions, come 

 down the chain by which the lamp was suspended, drink up 

 the oil, and, when gorged to satiety, slowly retrace its steps 

 to a recess in the fretwork above. A similar Spider is said 

 to have been found, in 1751, in the cathedral church of Mi- 

 lan. It was observed to feed also on oil. When killed, it 

 weighed four pounds ! and was afterward sent to the impe- 

 rial museum at Vienna.^ 



The following remarkable anecdote is translated from the 

 French : " M. F de Saint Omer laid on the chimney- 

 piece of his chamber, one evening on going to bed, a small 

 shirt-pin of gold, the head of which represented a fly. Next 



day, M. F would have taken his pin from the place 



where he had put it, but the trinket had disappeared. A 



servant-maid, who had only been in M. F 's service a 



few days, was solely suspected of having carried off the pin, 



and sent away. But, at length, M. F 's sister, putting up 



some curtains, was very much surprised to find the lost pin 

 suspended from the ceiling in a Spider's web I And thus 

 was the disappearance of the bijou explained : A Spider, 

 deceived by the figure of the fly which the pin presented, had 

 drawn it into his web."* 



In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, it is 



1 iV. and Q., vii. 431. 



2 Chamb Misc., vol. xi. No, 100. 3 Ji^id, 

 * The Mirror, xxvii. 69. 



