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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.
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?"
The insect carried very laboriously a stick ten or twelve times as long as himself; a hillock of earth, which he met on his road, stopped him for some time, and Piccolissima, who was eager to help him through his difficulties, and who was tormented with a desire to enter into conversation with him, took it into her head to assist the insect, and hoped thus to render herself agreeable to him.
Piccolissima was tempted so to call the two balls 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.
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.
They also call them anthophilai, which means lovers of flowers." "Your new friends, in particular the domestic bees, were among the Egyptians the emblem of royalty. Are you not pleased with that, Piccolissima? The ancient kings of France had them on their arms; bees were embroidered on their shields, and on their standards; and it was very proper that they adopted them.
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.
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 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. "He has no trunk," said Piccolissima, as she looked at a formidable mouth.
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.
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