him, being willing to see the end of so singular an occurrence. They remained on the table very attentively till somebody came to tell him that supper was ready, when having ceased to play, he told me these insects remounted to their webs, to which he would suffer no injury to be done. It was a diversion with which he often entertained himself out of curiosity.”[1132] The Abbé Olivet has described an amusement of Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile for refusing to betray to the government certain secrets intrusted to him by a friend who was a leading politician at the court of Louis XIV., which consisted in feeding a Spider, which he discovered forming its web across the only air-hole of his cell. For some time he placed his flies at the edge of the window, while a stupid Basque, his sole companion, played on a bagpipe. Little by little the Spider used itself to distinguish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, to drill the Spider by regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, at the extremity of the cell, and even on the knees of the prisoner.[1133] At a ladies’ school at Kensington, England, an immense species of Spider is said to be uncomfortably common; and that when the young ladies sing their accustomed hymn or psalm before morning and evening prayers, these Spiders make their appearance on the floor, or suspended overhead from their webs in the ceiling, obviously attracted by the “concord of sweet sounds.”[1134] The following lines “to a Spider which inhabited a cell,” are from the Anthologia Borealis et Australis: In this wild, groping, dark, and drearie cove, Of wife, of children, and of health bereft, I hailed thee, friendly Spider, who hadst wove Thy mazy net on yonder mouldering raft: Would that the cleanlie housemaid’s foot had left Thee tarrying here, nor took thy life away; For thou, from out this seare old ceiling’s cleft, Came down each morn to hede my plaintive lay; Joying like me to heare sweete musick play, Wherewith I’d fein beguile the dull, dark, lingering day.[1135] “When the great and brilliant Lauzun was held in captivity, his only joy and comfort was a friendly Spider: she came at his call; she took her food from his finger, and well understood his word of command. In vain did jailors and soldiers try to deceive his tiny companion; she would not obey their voices, and refused the tempting bait from their hand. Here, then, was not only an ear, but a keen power of distinction. The despised little animal listened with sweet affection, and knew how to discriminate between not unsimilar tones.”[1136]