Books: Piccolissima
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Eliza Lee Follen >> Piccolissima
"This young fly is doubtless your son," said Piccolissima to the
insect which had taken his place on her neck, in order that the
warmth might help digestion, without asking whether or not his nails
might tickle the little girl.
"What! hast thou not seen directly that we were not relations? but I
see how it is; I pity you, poor imperfect being with only two eyes
and one mouth, and no trunk," answered the fly. "It is natural that
thou hast only a superficial knowledge. This little upstart who
devours the sugar as if he did not mean to leave any of it for any
one else, this little person, who has but a few minutes ago escaped
from his shell, yet hanging to a dead rose leaf long since forgotten
as it lay there on the window, has not, as I have, four beautiful
black streaks on his corselet. The white spots on his back offend
the eye; I prefer the modest color of my brown rings, and the soft
shade of the color of the faded leaf on a portion of my wings does
not contribute less to the majesty of my aspect than the colored
feathers which ornament my antennae. As for me, I am the domestic
fly."
"I was wrong not to have remarked the differences which strike me
now," said the child; "but what does this young scapegrace mean by
what he says of metamorphoses, and countless legs?"
"Yes, yes; that is well known; his race lives upon hairy prey; in my
opinion there is nothing to boast of in that. Although thou knowest,
it seems to me, very few things, still I think thou art not
ignorant, of course, that parents place their offspring where it is
best. The mother of this fly of the rose bush laid her egg in the
midst of the flock which was to nourish her little one. This one
came into the world in the shape of a worm."
"Why dost thou shudder?" grumbled angrily the fly. "This form is as
good as any other; call this worm larva if it suits thy fancy; he
has still to each of his fourteen rings three little feet; but he
has not such elegant members as mine, a haunch, a thigh, a leg, and
an instep with five joints." While speaking, the old fly displayed
pompously one of his legs, which he began immediately to caress with
the edge of his lips, because he saw a grain of dust on one of the
small hairs.
"But," perseveringly asked Piccolissima, who wished to hear the
history of the fly to the end, "who are these little flocks in the
midst of which your friend has passed his early days?"
"They are the little red or green grubs which infest the rose bush;
these he pierces and grinds up with his teeth, and sucks them up
with his strange mouth one after another as he moves slowly among
them upon those forty-two roots of feet, of which he is so vain, for
I maintain that they cannot be called legs, or any thing like legs."
"You, then," said the little girl, "have better formed members."
The fly, who remembered that he had not at all better limbs, looked
suddenly wearied with the conversation, and shaking his wings, flew
away to the window.
"Of what color were you formerly?" asked the little girl of her only
remaining companion; "you, who are now of such a pretty shade of
brilliant green and bronze?"
"Me! I was of a pretty tender green. Weary of living on the ground,
I took the resolution to retire from the world. I shut myself up in
my skin, which soon became hard enough to serve for my retreat. My
house was carried, I know not how, to that spot not far from you; I
know not what artificial heat acted on me. I came to the belief that
the time had come for me to spread my wings, and I uncovered the
roof of my house in order that I might know what had been done
during my absence. They call me the rose fly."
As he finished saying these words, the fly, quite satisfied, joined
his companion in the window. Piccolissima was grieved that she could
not follow them; she listened attentively to the noise they made in
flying, and could distinguish musical tones. But, fatigued at last
by this long tension of her mind, gradually her ideas became vague
and wandering, her little blond head fell upon her arms, and she
dropped asleep and dreamed.
She dreamed that her two new friends, the flies, returned,
accompanied by an innumerable troop of winged insects. Each one
carried something, one a blade of grass, another a stalk of a plant,
another a petal, another a pistil. Two large beetles, with immense
horns or talons, dragged along small branches loaded with flowers,
such as Piccolissima had never seen.
All this troop set themselves to work and constructed the most
charming, the lightest little aerial car that one can possibly
imagine. A great fly, bristling with fine hairs, extended four
strong wings, and raising his voice, invited Piccolissima to mount,
and at the same time politely offered her his paw.
The little girl accepted the invitation, and found herself
immediately transported into the corolla of a beautiful white lily.
There she found a throne prepared for her. Very skilful little paws
lightly tickled her arms, and then her feet, in order to call her
attention to the labors of invisible waiting maids, who were about
dressing her in a robe of white velvet, cut out of the petals of a
white camellia, confined round the waist by a turquoise clasp,
borrowed from the myosotis.
A stamen of the lily served her for a sceptre; she took her seat; a
rose leaf hung for a canopy over her head; the bells of the lily of
the valley and the campanula sent forth their joyous chime. The
bladder senna filled the air with the noise of its bursting petards.
The artillery of the prickly furze played on both sides of the
throne as the nations of flies approached to pay their homage to the
queen.
To the cries of vivat, uttered with enthusiasm, Piccolissima replied
by inclining her sceptre; a golden rain fell from it, and was
eagerly gathered up by the surrounding crowds of humming courtiers,
whose shouts and acclamations filled the air.
The young sovereign then had to endure a long and grave discourse
from a fat drone bee who did not understand himself.
Ere long the little queen learned that her empire was in danger.
Dreadful enemies menaced the frontiers. "They are spiders," said the
flies. "They are the larvae of the rose bushes," said the grubs.
"They are the ichneumons," cried a crowd of winged insects.
Every one accused some other one. Piccolissima did not know what to
understand, but she hastened to arm herself. Two bees, as her body
guard, placed upon her head for helmet a flower of the snapdragon.
Two wasps, redoubtable hussars, brought her for a shield a piece of
the gold bronze wing shell of a beetle.
At last, she extended her hand to seize her lance, when a clap of
thunder shook the lily, dispersed the court, and the army, and
Piccolissima awoke, and found herself in the hands of her mother,
Mrs. Thomas Thumb, who said, very gently, "Tell me, dear little one,
are you not very weary?"
"It is strange," said Mr. Tom Thumb, some months after, "that I
always find now my ball of soap in its right place."
"It is because Piccolissima no longer rolls it into the corners for
a plaything," replied Mrs. Tom Thumb. "The little creature improves
--grows really intelligent."
"I am glad of it," said, a little while afterwards, one of the elder
sisters of the miniature woman; "I am no longer obliged to hunt from
place to place for my thimble and my scissors they are now always in
my work box."
"The reason is, Piccolissima does not now make a well of your
thimble, nor a spade of your scissors," answered her brother; "she
has become tiresome; she no longer frisks around me when I return
home; she has no longer any droll fancies which once amused me so
much; she is now a genuine doll; I really believe that this minikin
is putting on airs."
"Hold your peace, Monsieur," answered the busy chambermaid, in a
scolding tone, while she cleaned the runnels of a chair, upon which
the feet of the young man had left a good portion of the soil of the
garden; "I should like to see the day when you are as well behaved
as Mademoiselle Piccolissima. It was once Mademoiselle Touch-every-
thing. Six months ago, no one dared to leave a drawer in the house
open; now every thing remains quiet in its place; she is neither
more nor less than a reasonable being; she is a waxen image, I tell
you."
"Did I say any thing else, Madam Scold?" answered the school boy;
"she is a real Liliputian statue, fit for nothing but to watch the
flies fly. Ah! come, Piccola, Piccolissima!" he cried to the little
one, who was behind the shutter of a half-open window, absorbed in
the contemplation of a gnat who was up the window, singing a little
air through his nasal trumpet, "tell us, Piccola, a little of what
the flies say to you."
Piccolissima, who was always alarmed at a big voice, trembling,
turned round and stared at her brother, who, shouting with laughter,
made a pirouette, jumped over the balcony, which was near the
ground, into the garden.
The complaints of Piccolissima's brother were not quite without
foundation; she had become more reflecting, more observing; she was
less restless and less communicative; more amused, but less amusing.
She did not dare to repeat to her sisters her conversation with the
flies, lest they should laugh at her, and she became more frequently
occupied with her own thoughts, and more silent. Her silver voice
was heard no longer in every corner of the house; she was no longer
under every one's feet; the fragments of her dress were no longer
caught by the nails in her brothers' shoes, under the legs of her
sisters' chairs, or under the castors of the furniture; and her
mother, who had a habit of saying, "This little wild thing gives me
more trouble than all her brothers and sisters," said now, "Truly,
if she does not help me, she does not hinder me." As for Mr. Tom
Thumb, who loved to complete a remark by a proverb, instead of
exclaiming, "It is not strange that she does not grow,--a rolling
stone gathers no moss," murmured, rubbing his hands, "Whoever lives
will see what I have always said: It is only weeds that grow fast."
In order to employ the activity of Piccolissima, her father had at
one time given her some pots of flowers; for a long time, nothing
came of them, for she turned over the earth incessantly, and kept
looking at the roots to see if they began to sprout. Now that she no
longer asked ten questions, one after the other, without waiting for
an answer, and that she left her plants to grow, and no longer took
them up to look at their roots, she had in her garden, just under
the window, one foot of potatoes, three feet of hemp, a bean, and a
strawberry plant, in pots. Her brother, in jumping out of the
window, had broken off some ripe strawberries, which the little girl
had cherished for her mother, and Piccolissima went sorrowfully to
examine the havoc, and pick up the fruit.
She no longer supported herself upon the flexible stalks of the
nasturtiums and the convolvulus, which Mr. Tom Thumb cultivated, and
who more than once had complained at finding them broken. She no
longer seated herself on the branches of the mignonette, and then
let the wind blow her at its will, backwards and forwards, a
dangerous and monotonous amusement, which soon wearied. Now, with
her elbow resting on the edge of the pot of strawberries, under the
shadow of the Persian lilac, she remained in contemplation.
She observed running about some little creatures that she had never
seen before, and which appeared to her so wild that she dared not
begin a conversation.
"O, what is that?" she said at last, stooping down and resting her
head on her hand, and forgetting her lost harvest of strawberries;
"here is something very curious. They are smaller than the flies. A
myosotis could accommodate a number of them in its delicate cup;
their heads are wider than they are long, and on each side I
perceive a sort of fine leg, which has a sort of elbow, and which
the insect does not use in walking; the body is in three parts, all
of a shining black; the head has these two threads, which are always
moving, and which are of a lighter color at the ends; the corselet
is smaller, rounder, and more brilliant than that of the flies; and
the belly is covered with black scales. But these little beasts trot
away, scamper away so fast with their nimble legs, that one cannot
see them. What delicate forms they have! they must have worn corsets
when they were young. Ah! there is a sort of knot in this thread
which fastens the corselet to the belly. Wait, little fellow, wait
while I look at you a little nearer!" The small, thin finger of
Piccolissima caught one of the little creatures, but she found some
difficulty in holding him.
"Ah! at last I have you!" She held between her thumb and finger the
two hind legs of the insect, who stretched himself out stiff and
without motion, just as if he was sitting for his portrait. She then
saw above the arms and hands of the head, (thus she chose to call
the antennae,) two shining eyes, like two black buttons--naturalists
discover three with a microscope. "He has no trunk," said
Piccolissima, as she looked at a formidable mouth. At this moment,
the insect disengaged one of his legs, and twisting himself with
fury, and biting the finger which held him, he showed two jaws,
which worked like a pair of pincers. Piccolissima was not
sufficiently hardened to natural history. She shook her hand
violently, and uttered a cry that brought her brother to her in a
moment.
"Ha! ha! the great body," cried he, as he saw the trouble, and the
cause of it; "this is not a worthy enemy; it is only one of the
smallest ants. What would you say if you had to contend with the
herculean wood borer? Your ferocious animal is only a modest
fuliginosa, Madam Piccola; it is Formica fuliginosa, Latin words,
which mean soot-colored ant."
"I should much prefer that they should be called at once by a name
that I could comprehend, 'little blackeys,' instead of these long
words, that it almost takes away your breath to pronounce."
"This is because you are ignorant, sister; but for that, you would
love the Latin names, because they are so fine sounding, and can
express so many things. For example, formica; can you guess? O,
no, you will never guess," added he, with a knowing tone. "Very
well! formica means crumb carriers, because the little cunning
beasts carry all sorts of knickknacks."
Piccolissima, who once had only frisked and frolicked around her
brother, and in whose eyes she had been hitherto a sort of amusing
plaything, listened to him now with an air of intelligence and
satisfaction, with which he was secretly flattered. "Besides the
herculean borer," he continued, "there is another ant in the
forests, much larger than your enemy, and who builds mountains. They
call him rusa, which means russet. It is he who produces the formic
acid, a poison which he sheds with his abdomen into the bite which
he makes with his mandibles or jaws, which makes the wound a little
red, and makes it itch and burn a little." He was going on to add
that mandibula signified jaw bone; abdomen, meant belly. He might,
perhaps, while he was in this mood, have declined all these nouns,
but his little sister had ceased to listen; she was following with
her eye a file of her small black ants, and she saw them go and come
very busily upon a small stick which supported her only bean stalk.
Doubtless the wind had blown into Piccolissima's garden one of the
white cottony tufts which enfold the seeds of the poplar, for it was
a young shoot of poplar which served as support to the plant, and as
a garden for the ants. Upon the white cottony stem was an assemblage
of these little animals, green, brown, yellow, and transparent, all
plump, singularly alike, grave, immovable, like a Roman senate.
Certain active little creatures with fine shapes walked among them,
around them, over them, without appearing to hurt them, or
disturbing their gravity. The ants carried their easy manners still
farther; they struck lightly, rapidly, alternately, with their two
antennae, the backs and the sides of these peaceable animals; they
even went so far as to turn them over with their fore paws, and all
the while the other insects did not move, and allowed them to do as
they pleased.
"Look! look!" cried Piccolissima.
"Beautiful little wonder," answered her brother, "these are grubs,
that's all; and who does not know nowadays, that these are the cows
of the ants?"
"Their cows!" repeated the little girl; and she remained absorbed in
her examination. The ants still continued, in a playful and
irregular manner, to strike their little cows, whose trunks
Piccolissima saw were thrust into the bark of the aspen. Sometimes
an ant gave a little kick, and always one was at hand, with his jaws
extended, and his mouth open, ready to receive a drop of sirup,
which the eye of Piccolissima at last discovered falling from the
extremity of the body of the grub. "I see, I see!" she exclaimed;
"it is their way of milking. O the funny little pastoral people!"
Whilst she was in this ecstasy, the ant with the ends of his
antennae took the transparent little drop into his mouth; and then
carefully cleansed with the brushes of his feet the sugared antennse
which had served for fork and spoon, or rather for fingers.
"I should like to talk with him," said Piccolissima, as she saw the
ant making his toilet, "but these are a very silent, a very reserved
people; perhaps they are dumb."
The ant, who had just swallowed the drop of sirup, now quietly
descended the aspen walk; his belly was well stuffed and shining,
and he stopped now and then to rest, and wash his face. He met, as
he went down, an ant who was ascending the path. The new comer ran
up to him as to an intimate friend, as soon as he saw him, and
eagerly struck him with his antennae. The motion was very rapid; the
ant returned it by shaking his antennae, but more gently, and by
opening his mandibles. "Are they going to dispute, and to bite each
other?" thought Piccolissima. Not at all. The ant who had received
the sirup upon the end of his tongue, now offered a little drop of
it to the one who was hungry, who received it upon his tongue, while
he continued to caress with his antennae, and even with his little
paws, the friend who offered it. The joy of Piccolissima was so
great at the sight of this mutual kindness, that she made one of her
old leaps, and shook the frail stalk. Immediately there was a
violent commotion among the ants, who in great crowds blackened the
end of the twig. They ran hither and thither in the greatest terror,
striking their antennae one against the other. Many of them caressed
the grubs more eagerly, in a violent and impetuous manner, as if to
urge them to some exertion. Some of the grubs submitted to be taken
gently into the jaws of the ants; others, with their trunks in the
wood, looked as if they were too lazy to consent to move.
They were however, at last, (whether they would or not,) all carried
rapidly away. Each ant, loaded with her cow, ran down the tree, and,
following a little narrow path in the ground, reached a small, deep
hole, into which the ants, one after the other, all disappeared.
"O Mimi! O Linette! O Fifine!" cried Piccolissima, running from her
brother to her sisters, "they have carried away all their cows. Each
ant has his cow between his teeth; one holds her by the belly, the
others by the wings; come see! come see!"
"Cows with wings!" cried the astonished little girls. Mimi, who knew
all this, startled his little sister by saying, "The pet is right;
she has good eyes; there are many grubs with wings; come, come, my
small sister, it appears to me that you are discovering many things
already known. My ladies, the ants, ought to choose you for their
queen."
The same day, Madam Tom Thumb, who began to feel some confidence in
the reason of Piccolissima, carried her into the garden, to the
great joy of the little creature. It was a delicious place; there
were in it long covered alleys, and even a small wood, where one
might enjoy a sweet freshness in the heat of the day. Around a great
hall, covered with foliage, were seats of soft green moss. It was
there that Madam Tom Thumb used to embroider with her elder
daughters; and there she placed Piccolissima, allowing her to run at
large, only recommending to her prudence and discretion.
The child, who was formerly idle and weary of every thing, was in a
fair way to become a happy young girl, thanks to the attention she
began to give to every thing she saw, and to the interest which the
wonders around her excited in her mind. She was enchanted with the
thousand plants which embellished and covered the earth, and formed
in the smallest flower an object of admiration which filled her
soul. Very soon she met one of those beings who excited in her a
lively curiosity,--an ant much larger than the little black ones of
the shepherd race. The fine antennae, the three eyes, the top of the
head, the legs, the belly of this one were blackish, but less
glistening, and it was by the superiority of his shape, above middle
size, and above all, by the reddish color of a part of his body,
that Piccolissima recognized the russet ant of which her brother had
spoken. The insect carried very laboriously a stick ten or twelve
times as long as himself; a hillock of earth, which he met on his
road, stopped him for some time, and Piccolissima, who was eager to
help him through his difficulties, and who was tormented with a
desire to enter into conversation with him, took it into her head to
assist the insect, and hoped thus to render herself agreeable to
him. She seized one end of the little rafter he was carrying, and in
a tone which she tried to make as soft as possible, she said, "Will
you allow me, little one, to help you?"
The ant, clinging to the earth with his hind legs, stood up
straight, and threw out his antennae with a terrible expression.
Piccolissima was so full of kind feeling that she never thought of
exciting any anger; she thought that it was only a little struggle
of his politeness; therefore she insisted, taking firmly hold of the
bit of wood, and repeated, "I assure you it is a pleasure to me, and
it will not fatigue me." Forced to loosen his burden, the ant opened
his jaws full of formidable teeth, and advanced upon Piccolissima,
walking on his hind legs; the two others stretched out in front, as
well as his antennae, in sign of defiance; his body all bent,
exhaling an odor of vinegar so pungent that Piccolissima, letting go
the little stick, ran away as fast as she could, sneezing violently,
and shutting her eyes. When she opened them and returned, thinking
the ant was at her heels, she found her terrible adversary had again
seized his big stick by one end, and had slid it over the lump of
earth by means of a stone, which served him as a point of support.
She saw him sometimes push it before him, and sometimes drag it
after him, walking backwards till he reached the flat ground, when
he pursued his way very fast.
Piccolissima, who did not forget that her mother had recommended
discretion to her, followed at a distance. As she went on carefully,
she saw long trains of ants resembling her enemy; each one of them
was charged with a burden more or less heavy. All of them took their
way towards a mountain shaped like a cone, full of little openings
which, from a distance, appeared to be semicircular vaults; Roman
architecture Piccolissima would have thought if the multiplicity of
details of little architectural ornaments, all of wood work, had not
given her the idea of an old Gothic fortress. The rapid and violent
motions of the wild mountaineers did not frighten her; she walked up
slowly, hardly touching her feet to the earth, holding her breath,
observing every thing, and she was soon convinced that this little,
busy people took no notice of her. She came nearer and nearer to the
place where two great roads, covered with ants, terminated. She
heard a confused noise, like the hum of a great city, or as the
sound of the rain among the leaves.
"I thought they spoke only by signs which they make with the arms
that come out of their heads," said Piccolissima, still going
nearer; "why, then, this noise?"
The little girl was soon convinced that this noise was produced by
the numerous and busy footsteps of a solemn, austere, and
preoccupied crowd of ants. Not a word was said, but every one ran
rather than walked, and they seemed like a thousand individuals, all
actuated by one purpose. Supported on the lower branch of a chestnut
tree, Piccolissima placed herself a little higher, but very near the
citadel, which was one living mountain.
How can we relate what she saw then? It would take volumes. There
would be as many histories as individuals. Her attention was
attracted by the perseverance of one ant who carried a burden; by
another who was striving to get over some obstacle. She saw them
feed those who arrived laden and out of breath; she saw those who
repaired the doors, who opened and shut the windows, which were not
glazed like ours; others she saw as sentinels, standing on their
hind legs, charged to watch over the general safety. The busiest
carried in their mandibles, caressed with their legs and their
antennae, licked with their delicate tongues, exposed to the sun, or
carried quickly into the shade certain white balls which
Piccolissima took at first for grains of wheat, because they had the
form and size; but she was satisfied at last that these were the
children of the ants in swaddling clothes. Piccolissima was so
anxious to comprehend the mysterious talk, and the pantomime of all
this innumerable crowd, that she became yet more attentive. The
nurses caressed with their antennae in a peculiar way those eggs
which were beginning to show life, and the little observer saw the
slight movement of the incomplete being who, as soon as he was
bidden, raised his head, which was almost imperceptible even to
microscopic eyes, to receive the offered mouthful.