“Animals often have more intelligence than we,” continued Uncle Paul; “the epeira will prove it to us. With its hind legs it draws a thread from its spinnerets. The thread lengthens and lengthens; it floats from the top of the branch. The spider draws out more and more; finally, it stops. Is the thread long enough? Is it too short? That is what must be looked after. If too long, it would be wasting the precious silky liquid; if too short, it would not fulfil the given conditions. A glance is thrown at the distance to be crossed, an exact glance, you may be sure. The thread is found too short. The spider lengthens it by drawing out a little more. Now all goes well: the thread has the wished-for length, and the work is done. The epeira waits at the top of its branch: the rest will be accomplished without help. From time to time it bears with its legs on the thread to see if it resists. Ah! it resists; the bridge is fixed! The spider crosses the stream on its suspension bridge! What has happened, then? This: The thread floated from the top of the willow. A breath of air blew the free end of the thread into the branches on the opposite bank. This end got entangled there; behold the mystery. The epeira has only to draw the thread to itself, to stretch it properly and make a suspension bridge of it.” “Oh, how simple!” cried Jules. “And yet not one of us would have thought of it.” “Yes, my friend, it is very simple, but at the same time very ingenious. It is thus with all work: simplicity in the means employed is a sign of excellence. To simplify is to have knowledge; to complicate is to be ignorant. The epeira, in its kind of construction, is science perfected.” “Where does it get that science, Uncle?” asked Claire. “Animals have not reason. Then who teaches the epeira to build its suspension bridges?” “No one, my dear child; it is born with this knowledge. It has it by instinct, the infallible inspiration of the Father of all things, who creates in the least of His creatures, for their preservation, ways of acting before which our reason is often confounded. When the epeira, from the top of the willow, gets ready to spin its web, what inspires it with the audacious project of the bridge; what gives it patience to wait for the floating end of the thread to entwine in the branches of the other bank; what assures it of the success of a labor that it is performing perhaps for the first time, and has never seen done! It is the universal Reason that watches over creation, and takes among men the thrice-holy name of Providence.” Uncle Paul had won his case: in the eyes of all, even of Mother Ambroisine, spiders were no longer frightful creatures. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVII THE SPIDER’S WEB