Meanwhile, gentlemen, the first magistrate passed away and three citizens presented themselves as candidates for the position. Only two of them were important: Hazeroth and Magog, the respective leaders of the rectilinear party and the curvilinear party. I should explain these names to you. Since arachnids are masters of geometry, it is geometry that divides them politically. Some are convinced that spiders should always spin their webs with straight threads, and they adhere to the rectilinear party. Others, however, think that webs should be spun using curved threads, and they form the curvilinear party. There is a third party, which occupies the middle ground with the proposition that webs should be woven with both straight and curved threads, and is therefore called the recto-curvilinear party. Finally, there is a fourth political grouping, the anti-recto-curvilinear party, which sweeps away all such principles and proposes the use of webs woven from thin air, resulting in an entirely transparent and lightweight structure with no lines of any sort. Since geometry could only divide them, without inflaming their passions, they have adopted a purely symbolic geometry. For some, the straight line represents noble sentiments: justice, probity, integrity, and perseverance, while base or inferior sentiments such as flattery, fraud, betrayal, and perfidy are quite clearly curved. Their adversaries disagree, saying that the curved line is the line of virtue and wisdom, because it is the expression of modesty and humility, whereas ignorance, arrogance, foolishness, and boasting are straight, indeed rigidly so. The third party, less angular, less exclusive, has trimmed away the exaggerations of both sides and combined their contrasting positions, proclaiming the simultaneous nature of lines to be the exact representation of the physical and moral world. The fourth grouping simply repudiates everything.

Neither Hazeroth nor Magog was elected. The relevant balls were drawn from the bag, but were deemed invalid—Hazaroth’s because the first letter of his name was missing, and Magog’s because his lacked the last letter. The remaining, triumphant name was that of an ambitious millionaire of obscure political opinions, who promptly ascended the ducal throne to the general amazement of the republic. However, the defeated candidates were not content to rest on the winner’s laurels; they called for an official inquiry. The inquiry showed that the Inscriptions Officer had intentionally misspelled their names. The officer confessed to both the error and the intention, explaining that it had been nothing more than a simple ellipsis; a purely literary misdemeanor, if that. Since it was not possible to prosecute someone for errors of spelling or rhetoric, it seemed sensible to review the law once again. That very same day, it was decreed that the bag would henceforth be made from a fine gauze, through which the balls could be read by the public, and ipso facto by the candidates themselves, who would thus have the opportunity to correct any misspellings.