Unknown Story

"It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. "
"The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man."
Then she went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. 
She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden.
The admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror.
The message of the story is don't force things. I think this was the message because the towns people were trying to force the old man to move and things. Therefore, when the town people finally left him alone he was able to fly away.