The first night I fell asleep on the sand utterly exhausted, a thousand miles away from any inhabited area. Indeed, I was more isolated than a castaway abandoned on a raft in the middle of the ocean. So you can imagine my surprise when at sunrise I was awakened by a sweet little voice that said: “Please, can you draw me a sheep?”
“What?”
“Draw me a sheep…”
I jumped to my feet, astounded. I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Before me I saw a tiny but absolutely extraordinary figure looking at me very seriously. Here is the best portrait that I managed to make of him later on. I must admit, however, that my drawing is much less fascinating than the original, but that’s not my fault. Grown-ups had discouraged me from pursuing a career in painting when I was only six and from that point onward I had not learned how to draw anything except boa constrictors from the outside and inside.
Bewildered, my eyes wide open in astonishment, I stood there staring at this apparition. Don’t forget that I was a thousand miles away from any habitation, yet this little fellow seemed neither lost in the infinite sands of the Sahara, nor harmed by fatigue, hunger, or thirst, and not even weighed down by fear. He did not appear in the least like a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles away from any inhabited region.
When at last I managed to speak, I asked him: “But what are you doing here?”
To which he, as if this were a matter of extreme urgency, once again gently asked: “Please, can you draw me a sheep?”
When a mystery is this impenetrable, one lacks the courage to disobey.
Thus, absurd as this seemed to me, a thousand miles away from any inhabited corner of the Earth and in danger of dying, I pulled out a sheet of paper and a fountain pen from my jacket pocket. Then I remembered that I had studied primarily geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, so I told him, a bit peevishly, that I did not know how to draw.
He replied: “That’s not important. Draw me a sheep.”
Since I had never drawn a sheep, I made him one of the two pictures that I was able to make: the one of the boa seen from the inside. I was truly flabbergasted when I heard the child’s reaction: “No! No! I don’t want an elephant inside a boa. A boa is very dangerous and an elephant is very bulky. In my world, everything is tiny. I need a sheep. Draw me a sheep.”
So I made a drawing. He looked at it carefully, then said: “No, this sheep is sick. Make another one.
Draw another sheep.”
I made another drawing.
My friend smiled politely, indulgently: “Even you can see this is not a sheep, it’s a ram. It has horns…”
I redid the drawing yet again. But, like the previous ones, it too was rejected: “This one is too old. I want a sheep that can live for a long time.”
“For the sun to set…”
At first you looked very surprised, but then you laughed at yourself and said to me, “I’m always thinking I’m at home.”
Yes, indeed. The whole world knows that when it’s noon in the United States, the sun is setting over France. If you could go to France in a minute you would be able to watch the setting sun. Unfortunately France is too far away. But on your tiny planet it is enough to move your chair a few steps. And from there you can look at the sunset as many times as you wish…
“One day I saw the sun set forty-three times!” And a little later you added, “You know… when one is really sad, one loves sunsets…”
“Were you that sad on the day of the forty-three sunsets?”
But the little prince did not reply.
On the fifth day, thanks once again to the sheep, this secret of the little prince’s life was disclosed to me. He suddenly asked me, out of the blue, as if the question stemmed from a problem he had been mulling over for a long time in silence:
“Does a sheep that eat shrubs also eat flowers?”
“A sheep eats everything it finds.”
“Even flowers with thorns?”
“Yes. Even flowers with thorns.”
“But then, what is the purpose of thorns?”
I did not know. At that moment I was very busy trying to unscrew a tight bolt in my engine. I was worried because the mechanical failure was beginning to look very serious and the dwindling supply of drinking water was making me fear the worst.
“What is the purpose of thorns?”
The little prince never gave up on a question once he had asked it. I was annoyed at the bolt and said the first thing that came to mind:
“Thorns serve no purpose at all; they exist only because the flowers are being mean.”
“Oh!”
But after a moment of silence he confronted me with a sort of rancor:
“I don’t believe you! Flowers are weak. They’re naive. They reassure themselves in whatever way they can. They believe that the thorns make them fearsome…”
I did not reply. At that moment, I said to myself: “If this bolt won’t come loose, I will knock it out with a hammer.”
“I’d always like to do so forever,” said the man. “Because one can be both loyal and lazy at the same time.”
And the little prince went on: “Your planet is so small that you need only three steps to go around it. All you have to do is walk slowly enough to always remain in the sun. Whenever you want to rest you can walk and the day would last as long as you want.”
“That’s not much use to me,” said the man. “What I desire above all in life is to sleep.”
“Then you’re out of luck,” said the little prince.
“Out of luck,” the man replied. “Good morning.” And he put out his lamp.
“This man,” said the little prince to himself as he resumed his journey, “this man would be held in contempt by all the others – by the king, by the vain man, by the drunkard, by the businessman. However, he’s the only one who does not strike me as ridiculous. Perhaps because he is occupied with something other than himself.” He sighed with regret, and once again said to himself: “He’s the only one with whom I could be friends. But his planet is really too small, there is no room for two…”
What the little prince dared not admit to himself was that he most regretted leaving this planet because it was blessed with 1440 sunsets every twenty-four hours.
The sixth planet was ten times larger. It was inhabited by an old gentleman who wrote enormous books.
“Look, an explorer!” he exclaimed when he caught sight of the little prince.
Panting a bit, the little prince sat down at the table. He had been traveling for so long.
“Where do you come from?” the old gentleman asked him.
“What’s that fat book?” said the little prince, adding: “What is it that you’re doing?”
“I’m a geographer,” said the old gentleman.
“What’s a geographer?”
“He’s a learned man who knows where seas, rivers, cities, mountains, and deserts are located.”
“That’s very interesting,” said the little prince, “here we finally have a real profession!” He took a look around the geographer’s planet. He had never seen such a majestic one. “Your planet is lovely. Are there any oceans?”
“I have no idea,” said the geographer.
“Ah!” (the little prince was disappointed). “And mountains, cities, rivers and deserts?”
“I have no idea about those either,” said the geographer.
“But you’re a geographer!”
“Precisely,” said the geographer, “but I’m not an explorer. There are no explorers here. It’s not the geographer who goes around counting cities, rivers, mountains, seas, oceans and deserts. The geographer is too important to go roaming about. He never leaves his office, but he receives explorers, questions them and jots down their recollections. And if the recollections of one of them seem interesting to him, the geographer orders an inquiry into the explorer’s moral character.”
“Good morning,” he said at random. “Good morning – Good morning – Good morning,” replied the echo.
“Who are you?” said the little prince. “Who are you? – Who are you? – Who are you?” replied the echo.
“Be my friends, I’m all alone,” he said. “I’m all alone – I’m all alone – I’m all alone,” replied the echo.
“What an odd world,” he then thought, “it’s completely dry, completely jagged and rough. And men have no imagination. They repeat what is said to them… On my planet I had a flower and she was always the first to speak…”
But it happened that after walking a long way across the sand, rocks, and snow, the little prince finally discovered a road. And all roads lead towards men.
“Good morning,” he said. There was a garden blooming with roses.
“Good morning,” said the roses. The little prince looked at them. They all resembled his flower.
“Who are you?” he asked them, dumbstruck. “We’re roses,” said the roses.
“Ah!” said the little prince, feeling very sad. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in the entire universe. And here he saw five thousand of them, all identical, in a single garden.
“She would be very upset,” he said to himself, “if she saw this… She would cough a lot and pretend to be dying in order to escape ridicule. And I would have to make a show of taking care of her, because if I didn’t she would truly let herself die in order to humiliate me…” And he added, “Here I thought I was rich, having a flower unique in the whole world, but I had nothing more than an ordinary rose. She and my three volcanoes that reach up to my knees, of which one may be extinct for good, do not make me a particularly important prince…” And, sitting in the grass, he cried.
At that moment a fox appeared. “Good morning,” said the fox.
“Good morning,” the little prince politely replied, turning around; but he saw no one.
“I’m here,” said the voice, “under the apple tree…”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince. “You’re very pretty.”
“I’m a fox,” said the fox.
“Come play with me,” the little prince suggested. “I’m so sad…”
“I can’t play with you,” said the fox. “I’m not domesticated.”
“Ah! I’m sorry,” said the little prince. But after a moment’s thought, he added: “What does ‘domesticated’ mean?”
“You’re not from around here, are you,” said the fox. “What are you looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does ‘domesticated’ mean?”
“Men,” said the fox, “have guns and hunt. It’s terribly annoying! They also raise chickens. That’s all they’re interested in. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I’m looking for friends. What does ‘domesticated’ mean?”
“It’s something that has been forgotten by many. It means ‘to establish ties’…”
“Establish ties?”
But he looked at me and answered my thought: “I am thirsty too. Let’s look for a well…”
I made a gesture of weariness: it’s absurd to search randomly for a well in the immensity of the desert. We started walking all the same. After walking for hours in silence, night came, and the stars began to emerge. I saw them as if in a dream, through the fever caused by my thirst. The words of the little prince danced in my memory. “Are you thirsty, too?” I asked him.
But he did not reply to my question. He simply said, “A little water can also do the heart some good…”
I did not understand his reply, but I remained silent. I knew better than to cross-examine him.
He was tired. He sat down. I sat down next to him. And after a moment of silence he began again: “The stars are beautiful because of a flower that is not visible.”
“To be sure,” I replied and looked, without speaking, at the ripples of sand in the moonlight.
“The desert is beautiful,” he added.
And it was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits on a sand dune, one does not see anything or hear anything. And yet, something glimmers in the silence…
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that it conceals a well somewhere…”
I was surprised by my sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation in the sand. When I was little, I used to live in an old house, and legend had it that there was a hidden treasure inside. Of course, no
one had ever been able to find it or perhaps had never even tried. Yet it cast a spell on the entire house. My house was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart…
“Yes,” I said to the little prince, “whether it’s a house, the stars or the desert, what makes them beautiful is invisible.”
“I’m happy,” said the little prince, “that you agree with my fox.” He was falling asleep, so I took him in my arms and went back on the road. I was moved. I felt as though I were carrying a fragile treasure. It even seemed to me that there was nothing more fragile on Earth.
I looked at his pale forehead in the moonlight, his closed eyes, his locks of hair fluttering in the wind, and said to myself: “What I see here is merely the shell. What is most important is invisible…”
As his half-parted lips assumed a trace of a smile, I said to myself: “What moves me most about this little sleeping prince is his loyalty to a flower, the image of a rose that shines inside him like the flame of a lamp, even while he’s asleep…” And I thought him even more fragile. One needs to protect flames carefully: a little breeze can blow them out…
And, walking thusly, I found the well at sunrise.
