The Little Prince

 

32 

He sputtered a little, and seemed vexed.   

For what the king fundamentally insisted upon was that his authority should 

be respected. He tolerated no disobedience. He was an absolute monarch. 

But, because he was a very good man, he made his orders reasonable.   

"If I ordered a general," he would say, by way of example, "if I ordered a 

general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, 

that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault."   

"May I sit down?" came now a timid inquiry from the little prince.   

"I order you to do so," the king answered him, and majestically gathered in a 

fold of his ermine mantle.   

 

But the little prince was wondering... The planet was tiny. Over what could 

this king really rule?   

"Sire," he said to him, "I beg that you will excuse my asking you a question--"   

"I order you to ask me a question," the king hastened to assure him.   

"Sire-- over what do you rule?"   

"Over everything," said the king, with magnificent simplicity.   

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33 

"Over everything?"   

The king made a gesture, which took in his planet, the other planets, and all 

the stars.   

"Over all that?" asked the little prince.   

"Over all that," the king answered.   

For his rule was not only absolute: it was also universal.   

"And the stars obey you?"   

"Certainly they do," the king said. "They obey instantly. I do not permit 

insubordination."   

Such power was a thing for the little prince to marvel at. If he had been master 

of such complete authority, he would have been able to watch the sunset, not 

forty-four times in one day, but seventy-two, or even a hundred, or even two 

hundred times, with out ever having to move his chair. And because he felt a 

bit sad as he remembered his little planet which he had forsaken, he plucked 

up his courage to ask the king a favor:   

"I should like to see a sunset... do me that kindness... Order the sun to set..."   

"If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to 

write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general 

did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in 

the wrong?" the king demanded. "The general, or myself?"   

"You," said the little prince firmly.   

"Exactly. One much require from each one the duty which each one can 

perform," the king went on. "Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If 

you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would 

rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders 

are reasonable."   

"Then my sunset?" the little prince reminded him: for he never forgot a 

question once he had asked it.   

"You shall have your sunset. I shall command it. But, according to my science 

of government, I shall wait until conditions are favorable."   

"When will that be?" inquired the little prince.   

---

 

34 

"Hum! Hum!" replied the king; and before saying anything else he consulted a 

bulky almanac. "Hum! Hum! That will be about-- about-- that will be this 

evening about twenty minutes to eight. And you will see how well I am 

obeyed."   

The little prince yawned. He was regretting his lost sunset. And then, too, he 

was already beginning to be a little bored.   

"I have nothing more to do here," he said to the king. "So I shall set out on my 

way again."   

"Do not go," said the king, who was very proud of having a subject. "Do not go. 

I will make you a Minister!"   

"Minister of what?"   

"Minster of-- of Justice!"   

"But there is nobody here to judge!"   

"We do not know that," the king said to him. "I have not yet made a complete 

tour of my kingdom. I am very old. There is no room here for a carriage. And it 

tires me to walk."   

"Oh, but I have looked already!" said the little prince, turning around to give 

one more glance to the other side of the planet. On that side, as on this, there 

was nobody at all...   

"Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "that is the most difficult 

thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If 

you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true 

wisdom."   

"Yes," said the little prince, "but I can judge myself anywhere. I do not need to 

live on this planet.   

"Hum! Hum!" said the king. "I have good reason to believe that somewhere on 

my planet there is an old rat. I hear him at night. You can judge this old rat. 

From time to time you will condemn him to death. Thus his life will depend on 

your justice. But you will pardon him on each occasion; for he must be treated 

thriftily. He is the only one we have."   

"I," replied the little prince, "do not like to condemn anyone to death. And now 

I think I will go on my way."   

"No," said the king.   

---

 

35 

But the little prince, having now completed his preparations for departure, had 

no wish to grieve the old monarch.   

"If Your Majesty wishes to be promptly obeyed," he said, "he should be able 

to give me a reasonable order. He should be able, for example, to order me to 

be gone by the end of one minute. It seems to me that conditions are 

favorable..."   

As the king made no answer, the little prince hesitated a moment. Then, with 

a sigh, he took his leave.   

"I made you my Ambassador," the king called out, hastily.   

He had a magnificent air of authority.   

"The grown-ups are very strange," the little prince said to himself, as he 

continued on his journey. 

 

 

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