Chapter 2
"I speak as all well-formed people speak," answered the haughty insect, "with four voices;" and four puffs of air issued from the oval breathing holes on both sides of his breast, giving a tremulous motion to his two little egg-shell wings, his two balance wings, and the roots of his two other wings. "I breathe through these openings of my corselet, and I have, in order to enable me to take in the inspiring air which was created to bear me up, as many mouths as rings to my corselet."
He then swelled out with a proud air his brown abdomen, which seemed formed of rings of shell; and while he was indulging in the admiration of himself and his powers, the sharp eyes of Piccolissima discovered that these circles were not, as we should say, soldered together, but were lying on a flexible membrane, or thin skin, which held them in their place, and which was folded up or extended at the will of the insect. On either side, between each ring, there was in this membrane a little oval hole, smaller than those which, near the cavities of the corselet, emitted and modulated the buzzing sound which Piccolissima had just heard; these openings enabled the insect to breathe.
"You have many ways of speaking," the little girl said at last, with a sigh; "but covered as you are all over with brilliant armor, how can you touch any thing?"
The fly, who was at this moment digesting his dinner, and who did not like any interruption in any of his affairs, put forth his trunk without making any reply, shook a little the small beard that grew upon it, did the same with his antennae, rounded at the ends like little cushions, and furnished with feathery hair; then stretched forth his legs, as if yawning. Piccolissima comprehended that the two little cushions which ornamented the extreme end of the foot of the fly, in which she counted five joints, might easily possess the sense of touch, and that this also rendered them more useful for motion, and for the toilet; it was like so many intelligent brushes, all ready to perceive and sweep away the least grain of dust. The little beards she also thought might have the power of taste, like the antennae, at the same time that they listened to sounds.
"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 antennae 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.