Canvas and cobweb

Meaning

Lemma.

Toile means cloth or canvas, including a painted canvas, but toile d’araignée is a spider’s web. Gamelin jokes that thieves do not steal spiders’ webs or his own toiles. The self-deprecation turns market failure into a pun: his art is no more valuable than the dust of the impoverished room. English must name “webs” and “canvases” separately, so the edition preserves the two referents but cannot retain their shared noun without explanation.