Piccolissima | Page 6

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 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