Piccolissima.

by Eliza Lee Follen.

PREFACE.

This little story I have translated from the French of Mademoiselle Montgolfier. If children enjoy it as much as I have, and think it as pretty, they will not regret that I have preferred it to any thing I could write for them.

Mademoiselle Montgolfier says in her preface to the little book, "Notwithstanding the fanciful character of this story, it is, in fact, simply a little lesson in Natural History," and that "she would engage for the truth of all that Piccolissima relates of the manners and customs of the insects with whom she makes acquaintance."

It may also interest our young, and, perhaps, our more advanced readers, to know, that Mademoiselle Montgolfier is the daughter of the celebrated Montgolfier who invented balloons, and made the first ascension. I had, when in France, the pleasure of seeing this very interesting lady, and know her affection for children; and I am sure that it will please her to know that her tiny naturalist is welcomed by the American children. I therefore feel a particular pleasure in introducing the wonderfully small Piccolissima to their acquaintance, and recommending her to their affectionate regard.

E. L. F.

BROOKLINE, October, 1857.

PICCOLISSIMA.

Piccolissima was descended on the father's side from the famous Tom Thumb, so well known to all children. On the mother's side, her lineage was no less distinguished. Mignonette Littlepin (this was the family name of Madam Tom Thumb) was the great granddaughter of the wonderful Princess, who once lodged in a spectacle case, out of which she came so splendidly attired that the brilliancy of her little person illuminated all surrounding objects. A trustworthy biographer tells us that nothing occurred in the history of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb to disgrace their ill.u.s.trious parentage, and they were considered none the less good citizens because they were rather smaller than other people.

In the mean while, however, our humble couple became suddenly celebrated by the birth of our heroine; this small creature was so delicate, so exquisite, so pretty, and so lively and full of spirit, that from the age of two years she became the object of general admiration. She was not more than one inch in height, and her mother, who had prepared the cradle and baby linen for a child of the usual size, was puzzled to know what to do. Finally, the half of a cocoanut sh.e.l.l, lined, and furnished with soft cushions of thistle down, made a good bed for the little wonder; and the nursery maid, wife of a neighboring clockmaker, and a person of ingenuity, conceived the admirable idea of suspending the cocoanut cradle from the pendulum of a great clock, in order that the infant might be rocked all the time. Madam Tom Thumb was enchanted with the invention. She adhered to the old-fashioned notions, and could not suppose it possible that her little one could sleep without rocking.

What the good little mother found the most trouble from, in the extreme smallness and delicacy of the limbs of her new-born doll baby, was the impossibility of swathing and dressing it. So she was forced to resign herself to doing as the birds do, and bring up her little one on a bed of moss and down. She hardly dared to put upon the little arm, smaller than her own little finger, a little shift made of the fine white skin of the inside of an eggsh.e.l.l. The boots of the little one had soles cut out of the inside husks of the corn; a poppy leaf made her an ample bonnet. The spider's web which the dew whitens, and the wind winds up in b.a.l.l.s, seemed too coa.r.s.e too weave her sheets with, and the cup of an acorn was big enough for Piccolissima. Her parents obtained all her wardrobe, and all the small furniture for her use from those thousands of skilful laborers, so adroit, and yet of whom we think so little, who hide themselves in all the walls, in the leaves of the trees turned up like horns, under the bark of the trees; in short, that are found in all the corners and crevices of creation.

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb were not people who could be astonished.

Simple themselves, every thing appeared simple to them. Mrs.

Mignonette was at first a little disconcerted at finding that a drawer of baby linen which she had taken so much pains to make was of no use, and that one of the stockings which she had knit was big enough for her child to get into. But, when she was convinced that the baby could do just as well without stockings, and that the cushions of thistle down were sufficient to keep it warm, she was no longer troubled, and she said to her neighbors, who were eager to see her little wonder, "It is very natural that the little one should be so very delicate; from the first we called it Piccolissima; then, neither Mr. Tom Thumb nor I are very large; and I am told that our ancestors were still more delicately formed; what then is more natural than that this little one should be such a wee wee thing?"

The tranquillity of Mrs. Tom Thumb had this good effect; it appeased the curiosity of the neighbors. At last, like her, they came to the conclusion "that it was very natural that the child was smaller than the mother." and all went on as usual around our heroine, while she was quietly rocked by the pa.s.sing hours, and was amused with the sound of the silver clock bell. When, however, Piccolissima was two inches high, and lively as a gra.s.shopper, she became restless in her cocoanut sh.e.l.l; she was desirous to get out of it, to walk, and to jump, and she not only deranged the clock, but she was in real danger.

She was now as much as seven years old, and she amused herself with all sorts of little pranks, and loving ways, with one of her brothers eighteen months old. The great boy, in a sort of ecstasy at some of the drolleries of his little sister, seized her and put her in his mouth, taking into it nearly the whole head of the poor little thing. Her cry was so shrill that the baby boy opened his jaws and let the unfortunate Piccolissima fall on the floor. She did not recover for a long time from this fall. Another time, a large cat, a great mouser, ran after her, and it was with difficulty they rescued Piccolissima from the claws of Raminagrobis. The father, Mr.

Thumb, could not repress some anxiety about the fate of his amiable daughter, who had more than common intelligence, and who, by her extreme smallness, was exposed to so many dangers.

Piccolissima did her best to acquire knowledge. She had the best intentions in the world; she desired in every thing to please all who approached her; but her extreme restlessness led her away in spite of herself. One evening she lost herself in the solitude of a drawer in which was kept some tobacco; she came near dying from the effect of it. Once she was near drowning in a superb salad dish of frothed eggs, which she may have taken for snow mountains. She had a pa.s.sion for discovery, she had a prodigious activity of mind and body, and yet they could find nothing for her to do, "because," they said, "she is so little, so delicate." She could not play with children of her own age, she was not allowed to run about, and without object, without employment, without means of studying, with no companions, no sympathy, the poor little thing was in danger of falling into a state of apathy, more to be feared than the accidents from which they wished to preserve her.

One day, towards the end of February, Piccolissima had been placed upon the mantelpiece. Her mother had gone out; her father, who did not wish to have the trouble of watching over all his little daughter's movements, seated her upon a pincushion in which there were no pins, and putting the dictionary as a sort of rampart before her, he gave her a stick of barley sugar to entertain herself with, and after the usual admonition, left her to her dreams. Leaving the sugar to slip down by her side, she remained lost in melancholy reflections from which she was drawn by a light murmur, such as one hears sometimes in the silence of the night when persons are speaking in a low voice in a distant part of the house. Piccolissima listened with deep attention for some time. Usually she disliked the sound of conversation; it struck harshly on her organs, and seemed a sort of mimic thunder; but these sounds had nothing discordant, nothing disagreeable in them, to her ear. As Piccolissima had been forced to observe rather than to act, her faculties took a new direction, and a development of which she was unconscious herself took place, and her joy and her surprise were great when she found that, in what had at first appeared to her a confused murmur, she distinguished, as she listened attentively, intelligible words.

"It was hardly worth while," said a small, sharp voice, "it was hardly worth the trouble it cost me to leave my cradle. I have come into the world where all is dead around me. Ah! if I had only known that this world was so cold and dull, I should not have made efforts which almost destroyed me, to break the roof and leave my narrow house."

"Patience," replied another voice, a little quieter, but much like the other; "I have lived longer than thou, who art only a few seconds old. I have learned that one minute does not resemble another; that cold is near to heat, that light is near to darkness, and that sweet follows bitter. It is now two hundred and twenty-one thousand, seven hundred and sixty-one minutes, and twenty-four seconds, since I broke my sh.e.l.l. This sun, which you now see so pale in the dusk, glowed then with more fervor, and sent every where more rays and sparkles than I can count seconds in my long life. I was all wet as you are now--poor, helpless thing; but I turned myself to some of those brilliant rays, and my wings directly became strong, as you now see them, embossed and painted with seven different, changing colors, reflections of the rays of the sun. See! there is one of these rays now; come forth; spread thy moist wing, already shrunk and chill; thou shalt take thy part in the blessings which come from on high."

Piccolissima, all attention and full of curiosity, looked around her, and saw coming out from the window frame two flies, who appeared to be talking together. The wings of one of them remained stuck together on its back, and it made a great effort to extend them. Delighted at the discovery of companions in her solitude, companions, too, whose language she could understand, Piccolissima was eager to make their acquaintance; so she offered them her stick of candy. One of the flies--it was the elder--having fixed upon the little prodigy one of the thousand faces of his brown, sparkling eyes, surrounded with golden eyelashes, he then placed, one by one, his little black feet upon the stick of sugar candy, stretched forth his trunk, and began to suck with eagerness.

Piccolissima had now time enough to contemplate a being whose organs she thought were like her own in their weakness. She found pleasure in examining the extraordinary form of its almost cylindrical body, divided into three parts, and a head wider than it was long, an irregular globe surmounted by two horns, or antennae, as they are called. The eyes most excited her curiosity. She attempted to count their numerous little faces, so regular, so finely cut into hexagons, more polished, more brilliant than diamonds. When Piccolissima had counted one hundred, she drew from a very small box, which was a family treasure, some minikin pins, and stuck one of them into the cushion on which she was seated, intending thus to mark every hundred that she counted; but she had not counted thus half a thousand, before she found that breath and knowledge failed her; in truth, she did not know enough of arithmetic to count the eyes of a fly. In the very first group which she undertook to count, that on the right side of the fly, she had not counted a sixteenth part. Piccolissima, from her education, resembled the flies a little too much to boast of her perseverance. So she gave up her project.

While bending her small head over these eyes, she distinguished, at the bottom of these crystals, a moving dark spot, and thousands of little Piccolissimas, one after the other, smiled upon her from these little mirrors. O, wonderful! these thousands of crystal groups on each side of the head were not all; a triangle of three diamonds crowned the forehead of the fly. Piccolissima did not know the name they give to these small eyes, nor that a writer on the subject had said, that the diadem of the fly outshines that of queens, but she could not refrain from saying aloud, "O, my little friend, pray tell me what you do with so many eyes?"

"What do I do with them, indeed! why, I look," answered the fly, a little vexed at being disturbed in his repast. "Are there not fingers, nails, pins, pincers, jaws, claws, beaks, which menace me on every side? Do I not want eyes to see at a distance, and eyes to see near? And do you not know that my head is better put on than yours, which cannot turn to all points of the compa.s.s?"

"What! can you look behind you without turning your head?" replied Piccolissima, with an air which probably appeared to the fly not very sensible; for, shrugging up his right wing disdainfully, he returned to his sugar candy.

After a little reflection, she looked down again, and perceived, to her great astonishment, upon the stick of candy, which was of an amber color, a drop of water. She was sure, however, that she had done the civil thing to the flies, and given it to them first. How, then, was the candy moist? thought she; but she did not dare again to ask questions which excited such a rude buzzing in reply. So she rested her two little elbows on her knees, and her small head upon one of her hands, and continued to examine the fly. "Is it his nose?" said she, in a low voice, (for, having very rarely any one to talk with, she had a habit of talking to herself,) "is it his nose that he stretches out thus upon my sugar? I have heard papa say that there are animals, much larger than he, and which they call elephants, I think, who take up with their noses all the food they put in their mouths, and that they call this nose a trunk. Perhaps this is a little person of the family of elephants."

Piccolissima had hardly uttered these words, when the fly, whose antennae were longer than usual, and were turned towards the little prattler, gave such a leap that Mademoiselle Tom Thumb trembled. The wings of the insect fluttered, and made a little sharp noise, which, however, had nothing terrible in it, and Piccolissima perceived that her companion was laughing. It was evident that the fly must laugh with his wings, because he could not laugh in any other way. It was with his antennae that he had listened; they evidently served him as ears; and, when he recovered his gravity, he flew on the little girl's hand, and began to talk with her; then Piccolissima observed him more intelligently.

"It appears to me, little pet," said the fly, "thou must be very green to compare my delicate trunk, this instrument so nicely made, with the enormous and coa.r.s.e cylinder upon which, in hot weather, I have often travelled. How can any one suppose that I have any relationship to the deformed and gigantic monster of which you have just now spoken?"

Piccolissima thought that the little person was not wanting in vanity, and, while the fly was taking breath, observed that the trunk had disappeared, and that there was no possibility of discovering what the insect had done with it. The look, gloomy, and a little sullen, of the fly, recalled somewhat the funny mask of a harlequin, and Piccolissima was on the point of showing how one laughs with the lips, by laughing in the fly's face, when the latter forced air slightly through the breathing holes which open under the wings; the two little double scales, the winglets, which unfold at birth, began to vibrate; and Piccolissima, who just now remarked that this was the method that her new acquaintance took to emit sounds, was eager to listen to what he might say; so she made an effort to command herself, and became serious.

"Do you not see, with your dull human intelligence, that my trunk is a pump, a hollow tube, an instrument for sucking which I stretch out and draw in at my pleasure?"

While speaking thus, the fly thrust half way out from the cavity in the middle of his head, just under his eyes, a trunk with two or three joints in it; at the end was an opening like two black lips, folded over, with grooves or little hollows. The fly, thus urged to show the use of his trunk, or, more probably, forgetting the sequel of a discourse upon which he had entered in such a pompous style, flew upon the sugar, and set himself again to sucking it.

Piccolissima again observed the little drops fall which she had noticed before. It seems that the fly, being only able to take up liquids through his trunk, wetted and dissolved the sugar that he might suck it up. It was a pleasant thing to see his lips swell out, and press, handle, and knead, as it were, the amber surface of the sugar in order to make it melt sooner, and enable him to draw it up faster. After having examined all these proceedings for some time, with great amus.e.m.e.nt, the little apprentice naturalist cried out, "Well, my little guest has a remarkable talent for eating barley sugar."

The other fly, timid, wet, and with his wings folded, so that he seemed naked, remained behind upon the frame of the window. "Come, poor little wet chicken as thou art," cried the elder fly; "thou wast complaining just now of having found in life only discomfort and cold; dost thou not see these rays of the sun? dost thou not perceive the perfume of this delicious food?" The young, inexperienced fly was disposed to take Piccolissima, the dictionary, and the barley sugar for a chain of mountains. However, when the little girl turned her gentle, child-like face towards him, the insect felt the pleasant warmth of her breath; it reanimated him, and gave him courage, and with one bound he flew upon the arm of Piccolissima. With a sudden familiarity he murmured in a low voice, "Art thou, perhaps, an elder sister of mine? Thou warmest me. Art thou placed in the sun to strengthen thy wings? Relate to me, quickly, thy metamorphosis whilst I dry myself. Let us see, hast thou been a caterpillar, a worm? How many feet didst thou once have?

I will lay a wager thou didst not have any. For me, I had three rows of feet, forty-two in all, at least. Come, then, speak, and tell me; answer my question."

Usually Piccolissima did not require to be urged to speak; but these questions were of such an extraordinary nature, so unexpected, that the little girl remained silent. "Whether I have been a caterpillar or a worm? A queer question at the commencement of an acquaintance."

In the mean time the questioner was silent. Occupied with the comfort of exposing all his little person to the sun, he extended his wings, which, intersected with nerves, became every moment more substantial, without losing any of their delicacy. This transparent network, divided like stained gla.s.s windows, by dark lines, resembled isingla.s.s, sometimes decomposing the sun's rays, and showing the colors of the rainbow.

The head of the insect, as it dried, became shiny like satin; the eyes, of a reddish brown, glowed in a circle of silver. Over a little jet band, on the top of his head, three little soft eyes peeped out like those which the young observer had already noticed in the other fly. The brown trunk of this one seemed more delicate; his bronze corselet, reflecting like emerald, was garnished with fine hairs, like the down which the fresh morning spreads over beautiful fruits. The belly of the insect, which showed itself between and through the transparent wings, was of a beautiful shining black set off by six white crescents, symmetrically placed on the right and left. The legs appeared to Piccolissima brown, and very delicate. As she examined them, she remembered that the young boaster had vaunted itself of having forty-two of them; and she was upon the point of venturing to inquire what had become of the superfluous ones, when the lively fly, finding itself dry and strengthened, raised two of its legs and examined them very closely, and crossing them with great dexterity rubbed the soles of his feet one against the other. Piccolissima was tempted so to call the two b.a.l.l.s of flesh covered with hair, and armed with two nails which terminated the foot bones. The fly, having cleaned his brushes or sponges,--for they were as much like one as the other,--employing his trunk very skilfully, began to rub them over and under his wings, and over his little face, his eyes, and his antennae. He combed, brushed, sponged, and cleaned himself all over. Hardly had he finished one side before he began upon the other, using those of his six feet which were the most convenient. At last, he seemed weary of being watched by Piccolissima; and, shaking himself, he just grazed the eyelids of the little girl with his wings, and all of a sudden flew away, and alighted on the window pane, where he marched backward and forward with his head now up, and now down, quite indifferent to the laws of gravity.

Piccolissima followed him with her eyes with less surprise than curiosity; not being able to contain herself any longer, she determined to speak to the old fly.

"How does your companion contrive to walk with his head down in that way?"

The old fly, satiated with sugar, turned half round to the right, and with one spring placed himself opposite the little girl, and stared at her with such a stupefied look, that Piccolissima, although her good sense refused to believe it, thought for a moment that the ten or twelve thousand eyes were all fixed on her, forgetting, in her confusion at being thus stared at, that though each eye had thousands of faces to mirror all surrounding objects, still there was behind them all only one power of seeing, only one fly.

"What matters it, in the name of all that is sweet in the world? Of what consequence is it, when one walks, whether the head is on one side or the other, up or down? Poor infirm creature that thou art,"

said the fly; "dost thou see any difference?"

Piccolissima, somewhat mortified at having always walked with her head upward, remained stupefied and silent. It seems necessary, thought she, that every surface, in whatever direction it is placed, should have the same power to attract and support the feet of the flies as the ground and the floor to retain mine.

Ignorant as she was, the little girl had not yet heard of the gummy liquid which the wise ones had at one time supposed to be placed in the sponges of the flies, nor of the vacuum, by means of which the learned of the present day suppose these little cushions can adhere to the most polished surfaces; and she had not yet seen flies enough to form any opinion for herself.

"I see," said the little girl, in a small flute voice, "that you know much more than I; do not refuse, then, to instruct me. I cannot explain how it is you speak and breathe. Since you have kept your trunk in its case, I perceive above it your lips closed, and I do not see them move." Piccolissima, fearing she might be laughed at, did not dare to add, that she had supposed that the voice of the fly came from under his wings.

"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-sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l; 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.