340 The Life of the Spider 



Another detail attracts our attention : where- 

 as the interior of the house is exquisitely clean, 

 the outside is covered with dirt, bits of earth, 

 chips of rotten wood, little pieces of gravel. 

 Often there are worse things still : the exterior 

 of the tent becomes a charnel-house. Here, 

 hung up or embedded, are the dry carcasses of 

 Opatra, Asidae and other Tenebrionidse ^ that 

 favour underrock shelters ; segments of luli,^ 

 bleached by the sun ; shells of Pupae,^ common 

 among the stones ; and, lastly, Snail-shells, 

 selected from among the smallest. 



These relics are obviously, for the most part, 

 table-leavings, broken victuals. Unversed in 

 the trapper's art, the Clotho courses her game 

 and lives upon the vagrants who wander from 

 one stone to another. Whoso ventures under 

 the slab at night is strangled by the hostess ; 

 and the dried-up carcass, instead of being flung 

 to a distance, is hung to the silken wall, as 

 though the Spider wished to make a bogey-house 



^ One of the largest families of Beetles, darkish in colour and 

 shunning the light. — Translator's Note. 



2 The lulus is one of the family of Myriapods, which includes 

 Centipedes, etc. — Translator's Note. 



' A species of Land-snail. — Translator's Note. 



