3 Stories About Spiders

By H G Wells, Hanns Heinz Ewers and Marcel Schwob

There is something about the number 3.

The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.

Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois. It seems good things usually come in threes. Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 3 Stories
• Release date: Dec 17, 2025
• ISBN: 9781806373826

Book preview

3 Stories About Spiders

There is something about the number 3.  

The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two. 

Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern times, three’s a crowd may be too many, except when it’s a ménage à trois.  It seems good things usually come in threes.

Whatever history and culture says WE think 3, a hat-trick of stories, is a great number to explore themes and literary avenues that classic authors were so adept at creating.

From their pens to your ears. 

Index of Contents

Arachne by Marcel Schwob

The Valley of Spiders by H G Wells

The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

Arachne by Marcel Schwob

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

Her traces of the smallest spider's web;

Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams...

SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

You say I'm crazy and you locked me up; but I laugh at your precautions and your terrors. Because I will be free the day I want; Along a silken thread thrown to me by Arachne, I will flee far from your guardians and your gates. But the time has not yet come—it is near, however: more and more my heart fails and my blood turns pale. You who believe me mad now, you will believe me dead: while I swing on Arachne's thread beyond the stars.

If I were mad, I wouldn't know so clearly what happened, I wouldn't remember so precisely what you called my crime, nor the pleadings of your lawyers, nor the sentence of your red judge. I wouldn't laugh at your doctors' reports, and I wouldn't see on the ceiling of my cell the clean-shaven face, the black frock coat and the white tie of the idiot who declared me irresponsible. No, I wouldn't see it—because fools don't have a clear idea; whereas I follow my reasonings with a lucid logic and an extraordinary clearness which amaze me myself. And the mad suffer at the top of the head; they believe, the wretches! that columns of smoke burst forth, whirling, from their occiputs. While my brain, mine, is so light that I often seem to have an empty head. The novels that I have read, in which I once took pleasure, I now embrace them at a glance and I judge them by their value; I see every fault of composition—whereas the symmetry of my own inventions is so perfect that you would be dazzled if I exposed them to you.

But I despise you infinitely; you cannot understand them. I leave you these lines as a last testimony of my raillery and to make you appreciate your own insanity when you find my cell deserted.

Ariadne, the pale Ariadne you grabbed me from, was an embroiderer. This is what caused his death. This is what will make my salvation. I loved her with an intense passion; she was small, dark-skinned, and quick-fingered; her kisses were needle strokes, her caresses thrilling embroidery. And embroiderers have such light lives and such shifting whims that I soon wanted to make her quit her job. But she resisted me; and I grew exasperated when I saw the young men in ties and pomaded who were watching the exit from the studio. My nervousness was so great that I tried to force myself back into the studies that had made me happy.

I went to take the flight with constraint. XIII of the Asiatic Researches, published in Calcutta in 1820. And mechanically I began to read an article on the Phânsigâr. This brought me to the Thugs.

Captain Sleeman talked about it at length. Colonel Meadows Taylor surprised the secret of their association. They were united among themselves by mysterious bonds and served as servants in country dwellings. In the evening, at supper, they