Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/16

The Life of the Spider indelicate colleague, who has been awaiting the completion of the work, appears and hypocritically offers his services. The other well knows that, in this case, help and services, besides being quite unnecessary, will soon mean partition and dispossession; and he accepts the enforced collaboration without enthusiasm. But, so that their respective rights may be clearly marked, the legal owner invariably retains his original place, that is to say, he pushes the ball with his forehead, whereas the compulsory guest, on the other side, pulls it towards him. And thus it jogs along between the two gossips, amid interminable vicissitudes, flurried falls, grotesque tumbles, till it reaches the place chosen to receive the treasure and to become the banqueting-hall. On arriving, the owner sets about digging out the refectory, while the sponger pretends to go innocently to sleep on the top of the bolus. The excavation becomes visibly wider and deeper; and soon the first dung-beetle dives bodily into it. This is the moment for which the cunning auxiliary was waiting. He nimbly scrambles down from the blissful eminence and, pushing it with all the energy that a bad 12