The Little Prince written and illustrated by
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, they reign over . It is a very different matter." "And what good does it do you to own the stars?" "It does me the good of making me rich." "And what good does it do you to be rich?" "It makes it possible for me to buy more stars, if any are discovered." "This man," the little prince said to himself, "reasons a little like my poor tippler . . ." 32 Nevertheless, he still had some more questions. "How is it possible for one to own the stars?" "To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly. "I don't know. To nobody." "Then they belong to me, because I was the first person to think of it." "Is that all that is necessary?" "Certainly. When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you discover an island that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you get an idea before any one else, you take out a patent on it: it is yours. So with me: I own the stars, because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them." "Yes, that is true," said the little prince. "And what do you do with them?" "I administer them," replied the businessman. "I count them and recount them. It is difficult. But I am a man who is naturally interested in matters of consequence." The little prince was still not satisfied. "If I owned a silk scarf," he said, "I could put it around my neck and take it away with me. If I owned a flower, I could pluck that flower and take it away with me. But you cannot pluck the stars from heaven . . ." "No. But I can put them in the bank." "Whatever does that mean?" "That means that I write the number of my stars on a little paper. And then I put this paper in a drawer and lock it with a key." "And that is all?" "That is enough," said the businessman. "It is entertaining," thought the little prince. "It is rather poetic. But it is of no great consequence." On matters of consequence, the little prince had ideas which were very different from those of the grown- ups. "I myself own a flower," he continued his conversation with the businessman, "which I water every day. I own three volcanoes, which I clean out every week (for I also clean out the one that is extinct; one never knows). It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them. But you are of no use to the stars . . ." The businessman opened his mouth, but he found nothing to say in answer. And the little prince went away. "The grown-ups are certainly altogether extraordinary," he said simply, talking to himself as he continued on his journey. 33 14 The fifth planet was very strange. It was the smallest of all. There was just enough room on it for a street lamp and a lamplighter. The little prince was not able to reach any explanation of the use of a street lamp and a lamplighter, somewhere in the heavens, on a planet which had no people, and not one house. But he said to himself, nevertheless: "It may well be that this man is absurd. But he is not so absurd as the king, the conceited man, the businessman, and the tippler. For at least his work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful." When he arrived on the planet he respectfully saluted the lamplighter. "Good morning. Why have you just put out your lamp?" "Those are the orders," replied the lamplighter. "Good morning." "What are the orders?" "The orders are that I put out my lamp. Good evening." And he lighted his lamp again. "But why have you just lighted it again?" "Those are the orders," replied the lamplighter. "I do not understand," said the little prince. "There is nothing to understand," said the lamplighter. "Orders are orders. Good morning." And he put out his lamp. Then he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief decorated with red squares. "I follow a terrible profession. In the old days it was reasonable. I put the lamp out in the morning, and in the evening I lighted it again. I had the rest of the day for relaxation and the rest of the night for sleep." "And the orders have been changed since that time?" "The orders have not been changed," said the lamplighter. "That is the tragedy! From year to year the planet has turned more rapidly and the orders have not been changed!" "Then what?" asked the little prince. "Then--the planet now makes a complete turn every minute, and I no longer have a single second for repose. Once every minute I have to light my lamp and put it out!" "That is very funny! A day lasts only one minute, here where you live!" 34 "It is not funny at all!" said the lamplighter. "While we have been talking together a month has gone by." "A month?" "Yes, a month. Thirty minutes. Thirty days. Good evening." And he lighted his lamp again. As the little prince watched him, he felt that he loved this lamplighter who was so faithful to his orders. He remembered the sunsets which he himself had gone to seek, in other days, merely by pulling up his chair; and he wanted to help his friend. "You know," he said, "I can tell you a way you can rest whenever you want to. . ." "I always want to rest," said the lamplighter. For it is possible for a man to be faithful and lazy at the same time. The little prince went on with his explanation: "Your planet is so small that three strides will take you all the way around it. To be always in the sunshine, you need only walk along rather slowly. When you want to rest, you will walk--and the day will last as long as you like." "That doesn't do me much good," said the lamplighter. "The one thing I love in life is to sleep." "Then you're unlucky," said the little prince. "I am unlucky," said the lamplighter. "Good morning." And he put out his lamp. "That man," said the little prince to himself, as he continued farther on his journey, "that man would be scorned by all the others: by the king, by the conceited man, by the tippler, by the businessman. Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself." He breathed a sigh of regret, and said to himself, again: "That man is the only one of them all whom I could have made my friend. But his planet is indeed too small. There is no room on it for two people. . ." What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because it was blest every day with 1440 sunsets! 35 15 The sixth planet was ten times larger than the last one. It was inhabited by an old gentleman who wrote voluminous books. "Oh, look! Here is an explorer!" he exclaimed to himself when he saw the little prince coming. The little prince sat down on the table and panted a little. He had already traveled so much and so far! "Where do you come from?" the old gentleman said to him. "What is that big book?" said the little prince. "What are you doing?" "I am a geographer," said the old gentleman. "What is a geographer?" asked the little prince. "A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts." "That is very interesting," said the little prince. "Here at last is a man who has a real profession!" And he cast a look around him at the planet of the geographer. It was the most magnificent and stately planet that he had ever seen. "Your planet is very beautiful," he said. "Has it any oceans?" "I couldn't tell you," said the geographer. "Ah!" The little prince was disappointed. "Has it any mountains?" "I couldn't tell you," said the geographer. "And towns, and rivers, and deserts?" 36 "I couldn't tell you that, either." "But you are a geographer!" "Exactly," the geographer said. "But I am not an explorer. I haven't a single explorer on my planet. It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, and the deserts. The geographer is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk. But he receives the explorers in his study. He asks them questions, and he notes down what they recall of their travels. And if the recollections of any one among them seem interesting to him, the geographer orders an inquiry into that explorer's moral character." "Why is that?" "Because an explorer who told lies would bring disaster on the books of the geographer. So would an explorer who drank too much." "Why is that?" asked the little prince. "Because intoxicated men see double. Then the geographer would note down two mountains in a place where there was only one." "I know some one," said the little prince, "who would make a bad explorer." "That is possible. Then, when the moral character of the explorer is shown to be good, an inquiry is ordered into his discovery." "One goes to see it?" "No. That would be too complicated. But one requires the explorer to furnish proofs. For example, if the discovery in question is that of a large mountain, one requires that large stones be brought back from it." The geographer was suddenly stirred to excitement. "But you--you come from far away! You are an explorer! You shall describe your planet to me!" And, having opened his big register, the geographer sharpened his pencil. The recitals of explorers are put down first in pencil. One waits until the explorer has furnished proofs, before putting them down in ink. "Well?" said the geographer expectantly. "Oh, where I live," said the little prince, "it is not very interesting. It is all so small. I have three volcanoes. Two volcanoes are active and the other is extinct. But one never knows." "One never knows," said the geographer. "I have also a flower." "We do not record flowers," said the geographer. "Why is that? The flower is the most beautiful thing on my planet!" "We do not record them," said the geographer, "because they are ephemeral." 37 "What does that mean--'ephemeral'?" "Geographies," said the geographer, "are the books which, of all books, are most concerned with matters of consequence. They never become old-fashioned. It is very rarely that a mountain changes its position. It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of its waters. We write of eternal things." "But extinct volcanoes may come to life again," the little prince interrupted. "What does that mean-- 'ephemeral'?" "Whether volcanoes are extinct or alive, it comes to the same thing for us," said the geographer. "The thing that matters to us is the mountain. It does not change." "But what does that mean--'ephemeral'?" repeated the little prince, who never in his life had let go of a question, once he had asked it. "It means, 'which is in danger of speedy disappearance.'" "Is my flower in danger of speedy disappearance?" "Certainly it is." "My flower is ephemeral," the little prince said to himself, "and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!" That was his first moment of regret. But he took courage once more. "What place would you advise me to visit now?" he asked. "The planet Earth," replied the geographer. "It has a good reputation." And the little prince went away, thinking of his flower. 38 16 So then the seventh planet was the Earth. The Earth is not just an ordinary planet! One can count, there, 111 kings (not forgetting, to be sure, the Negro kings among them), 7000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 tipplers, 311,000,000 conceited men--that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups. To give you an idea of the size of the Earth, I will tell you that before the invention of electricity it was necessary to maintain, over the whole of the six continents, a veritable army of 462,511 lamplighters for the street lamps. Seen from a slight distance, that would make a splendid spectacle. The movements of this army would be regulated like those of the ballet in the opera. First would come the turn of the lamplighters of New Zealand and Australia. Having set their lamps alight, these would go off to sleep. Next, the lamplighters of China and Siberia would enter for their steps in the dance, and then they too would be waved back into the wings. After that would come the turn of the lamplighters of Russia and the Indies; then those of Africa and Europe; then those of South America; then those of South America; then those of North America. And never would they make a mistake in the order of their entry upon the stage. It would be magnificent. Only the man who was in charge of the single lamp at the North Pole, and his colleague who was responsible for the single lamp at the South Pole--only these two would live free from toil and care: they would be busy twice a year. 39 17 When one wishes to play the wit, he sometimes wanders a little from the truth. I have not been altogether honest in what I have told you about the lamplighters. And I realize that I run the risk of giving a false idea of our planet to those who do not know it. Men occupy a very small place upon the Earth. If the two billion inhabitants who people its surface were all to stand upright and somewhat crowded together, as they do for some big public assembly, they could easily be put into one public square twenty miles long and twenty miles wide. All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet. The grown-ups, to be sure, will not believe you when you tell them that. They imagine that they fill a great deal of space. They fancy themselves as important as the baobabs. You should advise them, then, to make their own calculations. They adore figures, and that will please them. But do not waste your time on this extra task. It is unnecessary. You have, I know, confidence in me. When the little prince arrived on the Earth, he was very much surprised not to see any people. He was beginning to be afraid he had come to the wrong planet, when a coil of gold, the color of the moonlight, flashed across the sand. "Good evening," said the little prince courteously. 40 "Good evening," said the snake. "What planet is this on which I have come down?" asked the little prince. "This is the Earth; this is Africa," the snake answered. "Ah! Then there are no people on the Earth?" "This is the desert. There are no people in the desert. The Earth is large," said the snake. The little prince sat down on a stone, and raised his eyes toward the sky. "I wonder," he said, "whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own again . . . Look at my planet. It is right there above us. But how far away it is!" "It is beautiful," the snake said. "What has brought you here?" "I have been having some trouble with a flower," said the little prince. "Ah!" said the snake. And they were both silent. "Where are the men?" the little prince at last took up the conversation again. "It is a little lonely in the desert . . ." "It is also lonely among men," the snake said. The little prince gazed at him for a long time. "You are a funny animal," he said at last. "You are no thicker than a finger . . ." "But I am more powerful than the finger of a king," said the snake. The little prince smiled. "You are not very powerful. You haven't even any feet. You cannot even travel . . ." "I can carry you farther than any ship could take you," said the snake. He twined himself around the little prince's ankle, like a golden bracelet. "Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came," the snake spoke again. "But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star . . ." The little prince made no reply. "You move me to pity--you are so weak on this Earth made of granite," the snake said. "I can help you, some day, if you grow too homesick for your own planet. I can--" "Oh! I understand you very well," said the little prince. "But why do you always speak in riddles?" 41 "I solve them all," said the snake. And they were both silent. 42 18 The little prince crossed the desert and met with only one flower. It was a flower with three petals, a flower of no account at all. "Good morning," said the little prince. "Good morning," said the flower. "Where are the men?" the little prince asked, politely. The flower had once seen a caravan passing. "Men?" she echoed. "I think there are six or seven of them in existence. I saw them, several years ago. But one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their life very difficult." "Goodbye," said the little prince. "Goodbye," said the flower. 43 19 After that, the little prince climbed a high mountain. The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knees. And he used the extinct volcano as a footstool. "From a mountain as high as this one," he said to himself, "I shall be able to see the whole planet at one glance, and all the people . . ." But he saw nothing, save peaks of rock that were sharpened like needles. "Good morning," he said courteously. "Good morning--Good morning--Good morning," answered the echo. "Who are you?" said the little prince. "Who are you--Who are you--Who are you?" answered the echo. "Be my friends. I am all alone," he said. "I am all alone--all alone--all alone," answered the echo. "What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them . . . On my planet I had a flower; she always was the first to speak . . ." 44 20 But it happened that after walking for a long time through sand, and rocks, and snow, the little prince at last came upon a road. And all roads lead to the abodes of men. "Good morning," he said. He was standing before a garden, all a-bloom with roses. "Good morning," said the roses. The little prince gazed at them. They all looked like his flower. "Who are you?" he demanded, thunderstruck. "We are roses," the roses said. And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden! "She would be very much annoyed," he said to himself, "if she should see that . . . She would cough most dreadfully, and she would pretend that she was dying, to avoid being laughed at. And I should be obliged to pretend that I was nursing her back to life--for if I did not do that, to humble myself also, she would really allow herself to die. . ." Then he went on with his reflections: "I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees-- and one of them perhaps extinct forever . . . That doesn't make me a very great prince . . ." And he lay down in the grass and cried. 45 21 It was then that the fox appeared. "Good morning," said the fox. "Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing. "I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree." "Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at." "I am a fox," the fox said. "Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy." "I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed." "Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince. But, after some thought, he added: "What does that mean--'tame'?" "You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?" 46 "I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean--'tame'?" "Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?" "No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?" "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties." "'To establish ties'?" "Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." "I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ." "It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things." "Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince. The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious. "On another planet?" "Yes." "Are there hunters on that planet?" "No." "Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?" "No." "Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox. But he came back to his idea. "My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ." The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. 47 "Please--tame me!" he said. "I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand." "One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ." "What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince. "You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that-- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ." The next day the little prince came back. "It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . ." "What is a rite?" asked the little prince. "Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all." So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near-- "Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry." 48 "It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ." "Yes, that is so," said the fox. "But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince. "Yes, that is so," said the fox. "Then it has done you no good at all!" "It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret." The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said. "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember. "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." "It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember. "Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ." "I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember. 49 22 "Good morning," said the little prince. "Good morning," said the railway switchman. "What do you do here?" the little prince asked. "I sort out travelers, in bundles of a thousand," said the switchman. "I send off the trains that carry them: now to the right, now to the left." And a brilliantly lighted express train shook the switchman's cabin as it rushed by with a roar like thunder. "They are in a great hurry," said the little prince. "What are they looking for?" "Not even the locomotive engineer knows that," said the switchman. And a second brilliantly lighted express thundered by, in the opposite direction. "Are they coming back already?" demanded the little prince. "These are not the same ones," said the switchman. "It is an exchange." "Were they not satisfied where they were?" asked the little prince. "No one is ever satisfied where he is," said the switchman. And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry . . ." "They are lucky," the switchman said. 50 23 "Good morning," said the little prince. "Good morning," said the merchant. This was a merchant who sold pills that had been invented to quench thirst. You need only swallow one pill a week, and you would feel no need of anything to drink. "Why are you selling those?" asked the little prince. "Because they save a tremendous amount of time," said the merchant. "Computations have been made by experts. With these pills, you save fifty-three minutes in every week." "And what do I do with those fifty-three minutes?" "Anything you like . . ." "As for me," said the little prince to himself, "if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water." 51 24 It was now the eighth day since I had had my accident in the desert, and I had listened to the story of the merchant as I was drinking the last drop of my water supply. "Ah," I said to the little prince, "these memories of yours are very charming; but I have not yet succeeded in repairing my plane; I have nothing more to drink; and I, too, should be very happy if I could walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water!" "My friend the fox--" the little prince said to me. "My dear little man, this is no longer a matter that has anything to do with the fox!" "Why not?" "Because I am about to die of thirst . . ." He did not follow my reasoning, and he answered me: "It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have had a fox as a friend . . ." "He has no way of guessing the danger," I said to myself. "He has never been either hungry or thirsty. A little sunshine is all he needs . . ." But he looked at me steadily, and replied to my thought: "I am thirsty, too. Let us look for a well . . ." I made a gesture of weariness. It is absurd to look for a well, at random, in the immensity of the desert. But nevertheless we started walking. When we had trudged along for several hours, in silence, the darkness fell, and the stars began to come out. Thirst had made me a little feverish, and I looked at them as if I were in a dream. The little prince's last words came reeling back into my memory: "Then you are thirsty, too?" I demanded. But he did not reply to my question. He merely said to me: "Water may also be good for the heart . . ." I did not understand this answer, but I said nothing. I knew very well that it was impossible to cross- examine him. He was tired. He sat down. I sat down beside him. And, after a little silence, he spoke again: "The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen." 52 I replied, "Yes, that is so." And, without saying anything more, I looked across the ridges of sand that were stretched out before us in the moonlight. "The desert is beautiful," the little prince added. And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams . . . "What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well . . ." I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart . . . "Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert--what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!" "I am glad," he said, "that you agree with my fox." As the little prince dropped off to sleep, I took him in my arms and set out walking once more. I felt deeply moved, and stirred. It seemed to me that I was carrying a very fragile treasure. It seemed to me, even, that there was nothing more fragile on all Earth. In the moonlight I looked at his pale forehead, his closed eyes, his locks of hair that trembled in the wind, and I said to myself: "What I see here is nothing but a shell. What is most important is invisible . . ." As his lips opened slightly with the suspicion of a half-smile, I said to myself, again: "What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower--the image of a rose that shines through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep . . ." And I felt him to be more fragile still. I felt the need of protecting him, as if he himself were a flame that might be extinguished by a little puff of wind . . . And, as I walked on so, I found the well, at daybreak. 53 25 "Men," said the little prince, "set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round . . ." And he added: "It is not worth the trouble . . ." The well that we had come to was not like the wells of the Sahara. The wells of the Sahara are mere holes dug in the sand. This one was like a well in a village. But there was no village here, and I thought I must be dreaming . . . "It is strange," I said to the little prince. "Everything is ready for use: the pulley, the bucket, the rope . . ." He laughed, touched the rope, and set the pulley to working. And the pulley moaned, like an old weathervane which the wind has long since forgotten. "Do you hear?" said the little prince. "We have wakened the well, and it is singing . . ." I did not want him to tire himself with the rope. "Leave it to me," I said. "It is too heavy for you." 54 I hoisted the bucket slowly to the edge of the well and set it there--happy, tired as I was, over my achievement. The song of the pulley was still in my ears, and I could see the sunlight shimmer in the still trembling water. "I am thirsty for this water," said the little prince. "Give me some of it to drink . . ." And I understood what he had been looking for. I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. It was as sweet as some special festival treat. This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the Midnight Mass, the tenderness of smiling faces, used to make up, so, the radiance of the gifts I received. "The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden--and they do not find in it what they are looking for." "They do not find it," I replied. "And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water." "Yes, that is true," I said. And the little prince added: "But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart . . ." I had drunk the water. I breathed easily. At sunrise the sand is the color of honey. And that honey color was making me happy, too. What brought me, then, this sense of grief? "You must keep your promise," said the little prince, softly, as he sat down beside me once more. "What promise?" "You know--a muzzle for my sheep . . . I am responsible for this flower . . ." I took my rough drafts of drawings out of my pocket. The little prince looked them over, and laughed as he said: "Your baobabs--they look a little like cabbages." "Oh!" I had been so proud of my baobabs! "Your fox--his ears look a little like horns; and they are too long." And he laughed again. "You are not fair, little prince," I said. "I don't know how to draw anything except boa constrictors from the outside and boa constrictors from the inside." 55 "Oh, that will be all right," he said, "children understand." So then I made a pencil sketch of a muzzle. And as I gave it to him my heart was torn. "You have plans that I do not know about," I said. But he did not answer me. He said to me, instead: "You know--my descent to the earth . . . Tomorrow will be its anniversary." Then, after a silence, he went on: "I came down very near here." And he flushed. And once again, without understanding why, I had a queer sense of sorrow. One question, however, occurred to me: "Then it was not by chance that on the morning when I first met you--a week ago--you were strolling along like that, all alone, a thousand miles from any inhabited region? You were on the your back to the place where you landed?" The little prince flushed again. And I added, with some hesitancy: "Perhaps it was because of the anniversary?" The little prince flushed once more. He never answered questions--but when one flushes does that not mean "Yes"? "Ah," I said to him, "I am a little frightened--" But he interrupted me. "Now you must work. You must return to your engine. I will be waiting for you here. Come back tomorrow evening . . ." But I was not reassured. I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed . . . 56 26 Beside the well there was the ruin of an old stone wall. When I came back from my work, the next evening, I saw from some distance away my little price sitting on top of a wall, with his feet dangling. And I heard him say: "Then you don't remember. This is not the exact spot." Another voice must have answered him, for he replied to it: "Yes, yes! It is the right day, but this is not the place." I continued my walk toward the wall. At no time did I see or hear anyone. The little prince, however, replied once again: "--Exactly. You will see where my track begins, in the sand. You have nothing to do but wait for me there. I shall be there tonight." I was only twenty meters from the wall, and I still saw nothing. After a silence the little prince spoke again: "You have good poison? You are sure that it will not make me suffer too long?" I stopped in my tracks, my heart torn asunder; but still I did not understand. "Now go away," said the little prince. "I want to get down from the wall." 57 I dropped my eyes, then, to the foot of the wall--and I leaped into the air. There before me, facing the little prince, was one of those yellow snakes that take just thirty seconds to bring your life to an end. Even as I was digging into my pocked to get out my revolver I made a running step back. But, at the noise I made, the snake let himself flow easily across the sand like the dying spray of a fountain, and, in no apparent hurry, disappeared, with a light metallic sound, among the stones. I reached the wall just in time to catch my little man in my arms; his face was white as snow. "What does this mean?" I demanded. "Why are you talking with snakes?" I had loosened the golden muffler that he always wore. I had moistened his temples, and had given him some water to drink. And now I did not dare ask him any more questions. He looked at me very gravely, and put his arms around my neck. I felt his heart beating like the heart of a dying bird, shot with someone's rifle . . . "I am glad that you have found what was the matter with your engine," he said. "Now you can go back home--" "How do you know about that?" I was just coming to tell him that my work had been successful, beyond anything that I had dared to hope. He made no answer to my question, but he added: "I, too, am going back home today . . ." Then, sadly-- 58 "It is much farther . . . It is much more difficult . . ." I realized clearly that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him close in my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong toward an abyss from which I could do nothing to restrain him . . . His look was very serious, like some one lost far away. "I have your sheep. And I have the sheep's box. And I have the muzzle . . ." And he gave me a sad smile. I waited a long time. I could see that he was reviving little by little. "Dear little man," I said to him, "you are afraid . . ." He was afraid, there was no doubt about that. But he laughed lightly. "I shall be much more afraid this evening . . ." Once again I felt myself frozen by the sense of something irreparable. And I knew that I could not bear the thought of never hearing that laughter any more. For me, it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert. "Little man," I said, "I want to hear you laugh again." But he said to me: "Tonight, it will be a year . . . My star, then, can be found right above the place where I came to the Earth, a year ago . . ." "Little man," I said, "tell me that it is only a bad dream--this affair of the snake, and the meeting-place, and the star . . ." But he did not answer my plea. He said to me, instead: "The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen . . ." "Yes, I know . . ." "It is just as it is with the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers . . ." "Yes, I know . . ." "It is just as it is with the water. Because of the pulley, and the rope, what you gave me to drink was like music. You remember--how good it was." "Yes, I know . . ." "And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better, like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you 59 will love to watch all the stars in the heavens . . . they will all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present . . ." He laughed again. "Ah, little prince, dear little prince! I love to hear that laughter!" "That is my present. Just that. It will be as it was when we drank the water . . ." "What are you trying to say?" "All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--" "What are you trying to say?" "In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night . . . You--only you--will have stars that can laugh!" And he laughed again. "And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you . . ." And he laughed again. "It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh . . ." And he laughed again. Then he quickly became serious: "Tonight--you know . . . Do not come." "I shall not leave you," I said. "I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble . . ." "I shall not leave you." But he was worried. "I tell you--it is also because of the snake. He must not bite you. Snakes--they are malicious creatures. This one might bite you just for fun . . ." "I shall not leave you." 60 But a thought came to reassure him: "It is true that they have no more poison for a second bite." That night I did not see him set out on his way. He got away from me without making a sound. When I succeeded in catching up with him he was walking along with a quick and resolute step. He said to me merely: "Ah! You are there . . ." And he took me by the hand. But he was still worrying. "It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look as if I were dead; and that will not be true . . ." I said nothing. "You understand . . . it is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy." I said nothing. "But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells . . ." I said nothing. He was a little discouraged. But he made one more effort: "You know, it will be very nice. I, too, shall look at the stars. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out fresh water for me to drink . . ." I said nothing. "That will be so amusing! You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water . . . And he too said nothing more, because he was crying . . . "Here it is. Let me go on by myself." And he sat down, because he was afraid. Then he said, again: "You know--my flower . . . I am responsible for her. And she is so weak! She is so naïve! She has four thorns, of no use at all, to protect herself against all the world . . ." I too sat down, because I was not able to stand up any longer. "There now--that is all . . ." He still hesitated a little; then he got up. He took one step. I could not move. 61 There was nothing but a flash of yellow close to his ankle. He remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand. 62 27 And now six years have already gone by . . . I have never yet told this story. The companions who met me on my return were well content to see me alive. I was sad, but I told them: "I am tired." Now my sorrow is comforted a little. That is to say--not entirely. But I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak. It was not such a heavy body . . . and at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells . . . But there is one extraordinary thing . . . when I drew the muzzle for the little prince, I forgot to add the leather strap to it. He will never have been able to fasten it on his sheep. So now I keep wondering: what is happening on his planet? Perhaps the sheep has eaten the flower . . . At one time I say to myself: "Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully . . ." Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars. But at another time I say to myself: "At some moment or other one is absent-minded, and that is enough! On some one evening he forgot the glass globe, or the sheep got out, without making any noise, in the night . . ." And then the little bells are changed to tears . . . Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has--yes or no?--eaten a rose . . . Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes . . . And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance! 63 This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared. Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognize it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back. |