remaining companion; "you, who are now of such a pretty shade of
brilliant green and bronze?"

"Me! I was of a pretty tender green. Weary of living on the ground,
I took the resolution to retire from the world. I shut myself up in
my skin, which soon became hard enough to serve for my retreat. My
house was carried, I know not how, to that spot not far from you; I
know not what artificial heat acted on me. I came to the belief that
the time had come for me to spread my wings, and I uncovered the
roof of my house in order that I might know what had been done
during my absence. They call me the rose fly."

As he finished saying these words, the fly, quite satisfied, joined
his companion in the window. Piccolissima was grieved that she could
not follow them; she listened attentively to the noise they made in
flying, and could distinguish musical tones. But, fatigued at last
by this long tension of her mind, gradually her ideas became vague
and wandering, her little blond head fell upon her arms, and she
dropped asleep and dreamed.

She dreamed that her two new friends, the flies, returned,
accompanied by an innumerable troop of winged insects. Each one
carried something, one a blade of grass, another a stalk of a plant,
another a petal, another a pistil. Two large beetles, with immense
horns or talons, dragged along small branches loaded with flowers,
such as Piccolissima had never seen.

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.

The little girl accepted the invitation, and found herself
immediately transported into the corolla of a beautiful white lily.
There she found a throne prepared for her. Very skilful little paws
lightly tickled her arms, and then her feet, in order to call her
attention to the labors of invisible waiting maids, who were about
dressing her in a robe of white velvet, cut out of the petals of a
white camellia, confined round the waist by a turquoise clasp,
borrowed from the myosotis.

A stamen of the lily served her for a sceptre; she took her seat; a
rose leaf hung for a canopy over her head; the bells of the lily of
the valley and the campanula sent forth their joyous chime. The
bladder senna filled the air with the noise of its