THE WORKER AND THE SPIDER. 218 
contrary! This big belly is its workshop, its magazine, the pouch 
where the rope-maker carries in front of it the material of the thread 
which it winds and unwinds; but as it fills this pouch with nothing 
but its very substance, it enlarges only at the expense of itself, and by 
dint of extreme sobriety. And you shall often see it, though emaciated 
in every limb, retaining full and expanded the treasure which is the 
indispensable element of its labour, the hope of its industry, and its 
only chance of a future. <A true type of the man of industry! “Tf I 
fast to-day,” it says, “I shall eat perhaps to-morrow; but if my 
material runs short, all is over—my stomach must rest and fast for 
ever |” 
My first relations with the spider were nothing less than agreeable. 
In my poverty-blighted childhood, while I toiled alone (as I have said 
im my book on “The People ”) in the then ruinous and desolate printing- 
office of my father, the temporary workshop was in a kind of cellar, 
sufficiently well lighted,—being a cellar in the boulevard where my 
family resided, but on the ground-floor so far as concerned the adjoining 
street. Through a large grated window the mid-day sun obliquely 
lighted up the sombre case where I put together my little leaden letters. 
There, at the angle of the wall, I distinctly perceived a prudent spider, 
which, supposing the stray sunbeam would bring some imprudent fly 
for its breakfast, drew near my case. This sunbeam, fallig not in its 
corner but nearer me, was a natural temptation to invite. its closer 
approach. In spite of my innate disgust, I admired the progressive 
ratio of timid, slow, and prudent experiment by which it ascertained 
the character of him to whose mercy it virtually confided its very 
existence. It watched me closely with all its eight eyes, and pro- 
pounded to itself the problem, “Is he, or is he not, an enemy ?” 
Without analyzing its figure, or very clearly distinguishing its eyes, 
I felt that I was observed and watched; and apparently this observa- 
tion, in the long run, proved favourable to me. By the instinct of 
work, perhaps (which is very great in its species), it perceived that I 
was really a peaceful labourer, and that I was busy, like itself, in 
weaving my cobweb. However this may be, it abandoned its strata- 
gems and precautions with a quick decision, as if adopting an adven- 
148 
