214 THE TWO. FRIENDS. 
turous and somewhat perilous step. Not without grace it descended 
upon its thread, and planted itself resolutely on our respective frontier 
—the edge of my case, favoured, at that moment, with a golden ray of 
the sickly sun. 
I was divided between two sentiments. I confess that I did not 
relish so close an intimacy,—the figure of such a friend pleased me but 
little; on the other hand, this prudent and observant being, which 
certainly did not lavish its confidence, seemed to say to me: “ Where- 
fore should I not enjoy a little of thy sun? So different in nature, we 
have nevertheless arrived together from our necessitous toil and cold 
obscurity at this sweet banquet of light. Let us take heart, and 
fraternize. This ray which you permit me to share, receive it from 
me, and preserve it. In another half century, it will kindle up your 
winter.” 
As the little black fairy said this in its own language, whispering 
low, very low—in fact, it could not be lower (for it is thus that fairies 
speak)—I marked the effect of it vaguely, and it slumbered in my 
mind. The circumstance, however, was recalled for a brief while some 
years ago; and again, after a long interval, it has been revived on this 
very day, when for the first time I record and explain it. 
On the former occasion, after a domestic affliction, I was spending my 
lolidays in Paris, and I went daily alone to walk in my little garden in 
the Rue des Postes. My family were in the country. Mechanically I 
remarked the beautiful concentric stars which the spiders had woven 
round my trees, and which they repaired and remade incessantly with a 
laudable industry, giving themselves immense trouble to preserve my 
small stock of fruits and grapes, and relieving myself from the impor- 
tunity of flies and the stings of gnats. They reminded me of the black 
domestic spider which, in my childhood, had entered into conversation 
with me. These latter were very different. Daughters of air and 
light, always exposed, always before the eyes of men, without other 
shelter than the surface of a leaf, where they may easily be captured, 
they are unable to cultivate the reserve or diplomacy of my old 
acquaintance. All their work is visible, all their little mystery open 
to the wind, and their persons at everybody’s discretion; they have 
