Gentlemen, I am about to astonish you, as I would have astonished Aristotle had I asked him: “Do you believe that a social order could ever be imposed upon spiders?” Aristotle would have replied in the negative, as will all of you, because it is simply impossible to believe that such a shy and solitary arthropod made for work alone and not for love, could ever be inducted into some form of social organization. Well, I have achieved the impossible.

I hear some laughter among the other curious murmurings. One must always strive to overcome one’s prejudices, gentlemen. Spiders may strike you as inferior precisely because you do not know them. You love your dogs and hold cats and hens in high esteem, and yet you fail to notice that the humble spider neither jumps nor barks like a dog, nor meows like a cat, nor clucks like a hen. Nor does it buzz or bite like a mosquito, or rob us of our blood and sleep the way fleas do. All these creatures are the very model of vagrant parasites. Even the ant, so praised for certain qualities, preys upon our sugar and our crops, and builds its home by stealing someone else’s. The spider, gentlemen, neither troubles nor defrauds us; indeed, it catches flies, our sworn enemies. The spider spins, weaves, works, and dies. What better example could there be of patience, order, foresight, respect, and, dare I say it, humanity? As for its talents, there can be no doubt. From Pliny to Darwin, naturalists the world over speak as one in praise of this tiny bug, whose marvelous web is destroyed in less than a minute by your servant’s thoughtless broom. And if time permitted, I would now repeat all of these men’s wise opinions; however, I have a lot to get through and so must be brief. I have them here, not quite all of them, but almost; I have, for example, this excellent monograph by Büchner, who studied the psychological lives of animals with such perspicacity. In citing Darwin and Büchner, I am, of course, merely paying due respect to two geniuses of the first order, without (as my vestments attest) in any way absolving them of the unfounded and erroneous theories of materialism.

Yes, gentlemen, I have discovered a species of spider that has the gift of speech. Initially I collected just a few of these new arthropods, then many more, and set about imposing a social order on them. The first of these marvelous specimens came to my attention on December 15, 1876. It was so large, so brightly colored, with a red dorsal patch and blue transversal stripes, so swift in its movements and at times so cheerful, that it completely captured my attention. The next day, three more appeared, and the four of them took possession of a suitable corner in my country house. I studied them at length, and was full of admiration. Nothing, however, could compare to my surprise upon discovering the arachnid language; for it is, gentlemen, a rich and varied tongue, with its own syntactical structure, verbs, conjugations, declensions, Latin cases, and onomatopoeia. I am currently engaged in meticulously compiling its grammar for use in schools and universities, based on the initial summary I prepared for my own use. It has, as you can imagine, taken extraordinary patience to overcome this most testing of challenges. I often lost heart, but my love of science gave me the strength to press ahead with a task that, I can tell you now, no man could hope to accomplish twice in his lifetime.