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You have only to ask them." Piccolissima meant to do this as soon as she had courage. Meanwhile, she rubbed in her fingers the dust of the lily, yellowed the end of her nose in smelling of it, her lips in tasting of it, still without finding in it the consistency of wax, or the taste of honey. "How do the flies do it?" said she.
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?"
Every fly used his middle legs afterward to press and roll up into his basket his little store. "Hast thou forgotten how to walk faster than a snail?" said Piccolissima to her sister.
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.
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.
These flies pressed it and pulled it, till it opened and scattered a quantity of little yellow pellets, which covered the insects so thoroughly, that they and the flowers seemed to have changed garments, so completely were they clothed with it. Piccolissima could contain herself no longer. She cried out to her sister, whom she saw coming towards her: "O, come, come quickly!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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