But this gregarious mode of living is wholly exceptional, confined to certain species, and peculiarly favoured climates. Everywhere else the spider, through its organism and the fatality of its life, assumes the character of the hunter, of the savage, who, living upon uncertain prey, remains envious, mistrustful, exclusive, and solitary. But remember that it does not resemble the ordinary hunter, who gets quit with his journeys, his exertions, and his activity. The spider's hunt costs it dearly, if I may venture to say so, and demands an incessant outlay. Every day, every hour, it must draw from its own substance the essential element of the network which is to provide it with food and renew that substance. Accordingly, it starves in order to nourish, and exhausts in order to recruit itself; it grows lean on the dubious hope of afterwards growing fat. Its life is a lottery, remitted to the risk of a thousand unforeseen contingencies. Hence, it cannot fail to develop into an unquiet creature, sympathizing but coldly with its kind, in whom it sees possible competitors,--in a word, it is a fatally egotistical animal. And were it not so, it would perish. The worst of it is, as far as the poor creature is concerned, that it is profoundly ugly. It is not one of those which, ugly to the naked eye, are rehabilitated by the microscope. The overwhelming speciality of its career has the effect, as we see among men, of attenuating one limb, exaggerating another, and prevents anything like harmony: the blacksmith is frequently a hunchback. In the same manner the spider is pot-bellied. Nature has sacrificed everything to its function, its wants, and the industrial apparatus which will satisfy those wants. It is an artisan, a rope-maker, a spinner, and a weaver. Do not look at its figure, but at the product of its art. It is not only a spinner, but a spinning-mill. Concentrated and circular, with eight feet around its body, and eight vigilant eyes in its head, it causes astonishment by the eccentric prominency of its enormous belly. An ignoble feature, wherein the careless observer reads the result of gormandising! Alas, it is just the contrary! This big belly is its workshop, its magazine, the pouch where the rope-maker carries in front of it the material of the thread which it winds and unwinds; but as it fills this pouch with nothing but its very substance, it enlarges only at the expense of itself, and by dint of extreme sobriety. And you shall often see it, though emaciated in every limb, retaining full and expanded the treasure which is the indispensable element of its labour, the hope of its industry, and its only chance of a future. A true type of the man of industry! "If I fast to-day," it says, "I shall eat perhaps to-morrow; but if my material runs short, all is over,--my stomach must rest and fast for ever!"