XXX The Life of the Spider 



and not the monotonous and arid register of 

 petty descriptions and trivial acts that they 

 might have been, various and so to speak con- 

 flicting gifts were needed. To the patience, 

 the precision, the scientific minuteness, the 

 protean and practical ingenuity, the energy of 

 a Darwin in the face of the unknown, to the 

 faculty of expressing what has to be expressed 

 with order, clearness and certainty, the vener- 

 able anchorite of Serignan adds many of those 

 qualities which are not to be acquired, certain of 

 those innate good poetic virtues which cause his 

 sure and supple prose, devoid of artificial orna- 

 ment and yet adorned with simple and as it were 

 unintentional charm, to take its place among 

 the excellent and lasting prose of the day, prose 

 of the kind that has its own atmosphere, in 

 which we breathe gratefully and tranquilly 

 and which we find only around master- 

 pieces. 



Lastly, there was needed — and this was not 

 the least requirement of the work — a mind ever 

 ready to cope with the riddles which, among 

 those little objects, rise up at every step, as 

 enormous as those which fill the skies and 



