Piccolissima | Page 6

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 shell.
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 compass?"
"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