Would we make her acquaintance?  On the rocky slopes in the oliveland, scorched and blistered by the sun, turn over the flat stones, those of a fair size; search, above all, the piles which the shepherds set up for a seat whence to watch the sheep browsing amongst the lavender below.  Do not be too easily disheartened:  the Clotho is rare; not every spot suits her.  If fortune smile at last upon our perseverance, we shall see, clinging to the lower surface of the stone which we have lifted, an edifice of a weather-beaten aspect, shaped like an over-turned cupola and about the size of half a tangerine orange.  The outside is encrusted or hung with small shells, particles of earth and, especially, dried insects.

The edge of the cupola is scalloped into a dozen angular lobes, the points of which spread and are fixed to the stone.  In between these straps is the same number of spacious inverted arches.  The whole represents the Ishmaelite’s camel-hair tent, but upside down.  A flat roof, stretched between the straps, closes the top of the dwelling.

Then where is the entrance?  All the arches of the edge open upon the roof; not one leads to the interior.  The eye seeks in vain; there is nothing to point to a passage between the inside and the outside.  Yet the owner of the house must go out from time to time, were it only in search of food; on returning from her expedition, she must go in again.  How does she make her exits and her entrances?  A straw will tell us the secret.

Pass it over the threshold of the various arches.  Everywhere, the searching straw encounters resistance; everywhere, it finds the place rigorously closed.  But one of the scallops, differing in no wise from the others in appearance, if cleverly coaxed, opens at the edge into two lips and stands slightly ajar.  This is the door, which at once shuts again of its own elasticity.  Nor is this all:  the Spider, when she returns home, often bolts herself in, that is to say, she joins and fastens the two leaves of the door with a little silk.

The Mason Mygale is no safer in her burrow, with its lid undistinguishable from the soil and moving on a hinge, than is the Clotho in her tent, which is inviolable by any enemy ignorant of the device.  The Clotho, when in danger, runs quickly home; she opens the chink with a touch of her claw, enters and disappears.  The door closes of itself and is supplied, in case of need, with a lock consisting of a few threads.  No burglar, led astray by the multiplicity of arches, one and all alike, will ever discover how the fugitive vanished so suddenly.

While the Clotho displays a more simple ingenuity as regards her defensive machinery, she is incomparably ahead of the Mygale in the matter of domestic comfort.  Let us open her cabin.  What luxury!  We are taught how a Sybarite of old was unable to rest, owing to the presence of a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed.  The Clotho is quite as fastidious.  Her couch is more delicate than swan’s-down and whiter than the fleece of the clouds where brood the summer storms.  It is the ideal blanket.  Above is a canopy or tester of equal softness.  Between the two nestles the Spider, short-legged, clad in sombre garments, with five yellow favours on her back.