it!"

Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to
Charmolue,--

"Master Pierrat--Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc
Cenaine."

"Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like Mummol.
What an idea to go to the witches' sabbath! a butler of the Court of
Accounts, who ought to know Charlemagne's text; _Stryga vel masea_!--In
the matter of the little girl,--Smelarda, as they call her,--I will
await your orders. Ah! as we pass through the portal, you will explain
to me also the meaning of the gardener painted in relief, which one sees
as one enters the church. Is it not the Sower? He! master, of what are
you thinking, pray?"

Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to him.
Charmolue, following the direction of his glance, perceived that it was
fixed mechanically on the great spider's web which draped the window.
At that moment, a bewildered fly which was seeking the March sun, flung
itself through the net and became entangled there. On the agitation of
his web, the enormous spider made an abrupt move from his central cell,
then with one bound, rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with
his fore antennae, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim's
bead. "Poor fly!" said the king's procurator in the ecclesiastical
court; and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as though
roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive violence.

"Master Jacques," he cried, "let fate take its course!" The procurator
wheeled round in affright; it seemed to him that pincers of iron had
clutched his arm. The priest's eye was staring, wild, flaming, and
remained riveted on the horrible little group of the spider and the fly.

"Oh, yes!" continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to proceed from
the depths of his being, "behold here a symbol of all. She flies, she is
joyous, she is just born; she seeks the spring, the open air, liberty:
oh, yes! but let her come in contact with the fatal network, and
the spider issues from it, the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor,
predestined fly! Let things take their course, Master Jacques, 'tis
fate! Alas! Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also!
Thou wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other
care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal truth; but
in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window which opens upon
the other world,--upon the world o