The outcome of these plans is a glazed prison whose panes will give no hold to the grapnels and will make climbing impossible. The joiner builds me a frame, the glazier completes the work. I myself varnish the woodwork, so as to make the uprights very slippery. The structure looks like four window-frames placed side by side and put together to form a rectangle. The bottom is a flooring with a layer of sand. A lid covers it altogether when the weather is cold and especially when the rain threatens a flood, which would have disastrous effects on this undrained ground. It is raised more or less high according to the state of the day. The enclosure has ample room for two dozen chambers, each with its potsherd and its occupant. Moreover, wide alleys and spacious cross-roads allow long walks to be taken without hindrance. Well, at the very moment when I believe myself to have solved the housing-question satisfactorily, I perceive that the glazed park will not retain its population long, if I do not invent a remedy. The glass stops short any attempt at scaling: for lack of adhesive sandals, the Scorpions cannot grip a surface of this kind. They flounder against the panes, it is true, and raise themselves to their full length on the support of their tail: an excellent buttress, but they have hardly left the ground before they fall back again, heavily. Things go wrong in respect of the wooden uprights, though these are made as narrow as possible and varnished with particular care. The stubborn climbers clamber little by little along these smooth tracks; they halt from time to time, clinging to the greasy pole, and then resume the difficult ascent. I surprise some who have reached the top and are on the point of escaping. My tweezers replace them in the fold. As the ventilation of the home demands that the lid should remain raised during the greater part of the day, the place would soon be wholly deserted if I did not see to it. I think of greasing the uprights with a mixture of oil and soap. This restrains the fugitives slightly, without succeeding in stopping them. Their delicate little claws manage to sink into the pores of the wood through the substance coating it and the ascent begins anew. Let us try a non-porous obstacle. I hang the walls with glazed paper. This time the difficulty is insurmountable for the big, pot-bellied ones; it is not quite so effective with regard to the others, who, being nimbler in their gait, try to hoist themselves up and often succeed in doing so. I get the better of them only by glossing the glazed paper with soot. Henceforth there are no more escapes, though attempts at flight continue. Coming after the experiment with the forcing-frames, these feats of prowess on slippery surfaces tell us all there is to learn about an aptitude which the animal’s corpulence was far from leading us to suspect. Like his black colleague who enters our houses, the Languedocian Scorpion is a skilled climber.