The Little Prince

 

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 Chapter 22   

  the little prince encounters a railway switchman 

　

   

"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..."   

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"They are lucky," the switchman said. 

 

 

 

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68 

 Chapter 23   

  the little prince encounters a merchant 

　

   

"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." 

 

 

 

 

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 Chapter 24   

  the narrator and the little prince, thirsty, hunt for a 

well in the desert 

　

   

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:   

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"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."   

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..."   

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