Page:The Life of the Spider.djvu/17

Preface gives, strives to gain the offing. But the other, who is rather distrustful, interrupts his laborious excavations, looks overboard, sees the sacrilegious rape and leaps out of the hole. Caught in the act, the shameless and dishonest partner makes untold efforts to play upon the other's credulity, turns round and round the inestimable orb and, embracing it and propping himself against it, with fraudulent heroic exertions pretends to be frantically supporting it on a non-existent slope. The two expostulate with each other in silence, gesticulate wildly with their mandibles and tarsi and then, with one accord, bring back the ball to the burrow.

It is pronounced sufficiently spacious and comfortable. They introduce the treasure, they close the entrance to the corridor; and now, in the propitious darkness and the warm damp, where the magnificent stercoral globe alone holds sway, the two reconciled messmates sit down face to face. Then, far from the light and the cares of day and in the great silence of the hypogeous shade, solemnly commences the most fabulous banquet whereof abdominal imagination ever evoked the absolute beatitudes. 13