Piccolissima

by Adélaïde de Montgolfier

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 illustrious 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 shell, 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 eggshell. 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 balls, seemed too coarse 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 passing hours, and was amused with the sound of the silver clock bell. When, however, Piccolissima was two inches high, and lively as a grasshopper, she became restless in her cocoanut shell; 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 passion 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 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.