The Little Prince

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The Little Prince

when I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle called True Stories. It showed a
boa constrictor swallowing a wild animal. This is what it looked like.
In the book it said: ‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. Afterwards they are unable to move. Then they sleep for six months while they digest.’
That set me thinking about all the things that go on in the jungle and, with a crayon, I did my first drawing. I called it drawing number one. It looked like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked
if they found it scary.
They answered: ‘What’s scary about a hat?’
But my drawing was not of a hat. It was a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. So then I drew the inside of the boa, to help the grown-ups understand. They always need explanations. This is what my drawing number two looked like:

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The grown-ups told me to forget about drawing elephants inside boa constrictors and to concentrate instead on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. Which is why, at the age of six, seeing as my drawing number one and my drawing number two had been such a disaster, I gave up on a glorious career as an artist. Grown-ups never understand anything on their own, and it’s nuisance for children to have to keep explaining things over and over again.
So I had to choose another profession, and I learned to be a pilot. I flew all around the world. And it is true that geography came in very handy. I could tell the difference between China and Arizona at a glance. Which is very useful, if you lose your way at night.
Over the past years, I have met lots of sensible people and spent a lot of time living in the world of grown-ups. I have seen them at close quarters, which has done nothing to change my opinion of them.
Whenever I met a grown-up who seemed fairly intelligent, I would test him with my drawing number one which I have always kept, to find out if he really was perceptive. But he would always reply: ‘It’s a hat.’ So instead of talking to him about boa constrictors or the jungle or the stars, I’d come down to his level and discuss bridge, golf, politics and neckties. And the grown-up would be delighted to meet such a reasonable man.
and so I lived alone, with no one I could really talk to, until six years ago when my plane broke down in Sahara Desert. As I did not have a mechanic with me, or any passengers, I was going to have to make a complicated engine repair on my own. My life depended on it, since I had
barely enough drinking water to last for only 8 days.
The first night, I lay down on the ground and fell asleep, miles and miles from any living soul. I was more cut off than a castaway adrift in the middle of the ocean. So you can imagine my astonishment when I was awakened at daybreak by a funny little voice saying: “Please, will you draw me a little lamb?”
“What”
“Draw me a little lamb…”
I leaped to my feet as if I had been struck by lightning. I rubbed my eyes and stared. And I saw the most extraordinary little fellow studying me intently. This is the best picture I have managed to draw of him from memory.
But of course my drawing is not nearly as delightful as the original. That is not my fault; the grown-ups had put a stop to my artistic career when I was six and I had never drawn anything other than my two boa constrictors.

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I gazed at him in amazement. I was miles and miles
from any living soul, remember. But my little fellow did not look lost. Nor did he seem weak with exhaustion, or hunger, or thirst, or fright. In no way did he look like a child lost in the middle of the desert miles and miles from any living soul. When at last I found my voice, I said to him: “What on earth are you doing here?”
And he repeated, very quietly, as if it were a matter of the utmost seriousness: “Please, will you draw me a little lamb?”
Here I was, miles and miles from any living soul and with my life in danger, but I was so baffled that I meekly prepared to do as he asked and took a pen and paper out of my pocket. And then I remembered that I had mostly studied geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little fellow (somewhat irritably) that I couldn’t draw. And he replied: “It doesn’t matter. Draw me a little lamb.”

As I had never done a picture of a lamb, I presented him with one of the only two drawings I could do: a boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow say: “No! No! I don’t want an elephant inside a boa. A boa’s too dangerous, and an elephant takes up too much room. My place is tiny. I need a lamb. Draw me a little lamb.”
So I drew.

He scrutinized my effort and said: “No! That one looks very sickly. Draw another one.”
I drew:
My little friend smiled indulgently: “Can’t you see… that’s not my lamb, it’s a ram. It’s got horns.”
So I started all over again.

But again, he turned it down: “That one’s too old. I want a lamb that will live for a long time.”

I was in a hurry to start stripping down the engine and my patience was wearing thin, so I hastily sketched this:
And I said: “That’s the crate. The lamb you want is inside.”
And I was amazed to see my young critic’s face light up: “That’s exactly what I wanted! Do you think this lamb will need a lot of grass?”
“Why?”
“Because my place is tiny.”
“I’m sure there’ll be enough. I’ve given you a very little
lamb.”
He looked more closely at the drawing: “Not that
little… Oh look! He’s fallen asleep.”
And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little
prince.

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it took me ages to work out where the little prince came from. He asked me lots of questions but never seemed to hear mine. I gradually pieced his story together from odd things he said. For instance, when he first caught sight of my plane (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too
complicated for me), he asked me: “What’s that thing?” “It’s not a thing. It flies. It’s a plane. It’s my plane.”
And I was proud to tell him that I was a pilot and I flew
planes.
Then he exclaimed: “What! You feel out of the sky!” “Yes”, I replied modestly.
“Oh! That’s funny.”
And the little prince gave a tinkling laugh which I
found extremely annoying. I expect people to take my troubles seriously.
Then he added: “So you came out of the sky too! What planet are you from?”
It suddenly dawned on me that he was giving me an important clue as to his mysterious appearance, and I said: “You’re from another planet, aren’t you?”
But he did not reply. Still staring at my plane, he gently nodded his head: “Of course, you can’t have come from very far away in that thing.”
And he stood lost in thought for a while. Then, taking my lamb out of his pocket, he examined his treasure.

You can imagine how intrigued I was by his allusion to other planets.
So I tried to find out more: “Where do you come from, little man? Where is ‘your place’? Where do you want to take my lamb?”
He pondered for a while and replied: “The good thing about the crate is that at night it can be his house.”
“Exactly. And if you behave, I’ll give you a rope to tie him up during the day. And a stake.”
The little prince was shocked: “Tie him up? What a strange thing to do!”
“But if you don’t tie him up, he’ll wander all over the place and get lost.”
And my little friend burst out laughing again: “But where would he go?”
“Anywhere. Straight ahead of him.”
Then the little prince remarked solemnly: “It wouldn’t matter, my place is so tiny!”
And he added wistfully: “Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far.”

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ihad thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that the planet the little prince came from was scarcely
any larger than a house!
But that did not really surprise me much. I knew very well that in addition to the great planets -such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus- to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope. When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number. He might call it, for example, “Asteroid 325.”
I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as Β 612.

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. Grown-ups are like that…

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B 612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on no account of the grown-ups and their ways. Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost 100.000 francs.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!”
Just so, you might say to them: “The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.” And what good would it do tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: “The planet he came from is Asteroid B 612,” then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.
They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.

But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales. I should have liked to say: “Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a friend…”
To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story.
I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures…
It is for that purpose, again, that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made any pictures except those of the boa constrictor from the outside and the boa constrictor from the inside, since I was six. I shall certainly try to make my portraits as true to life as possible. But I am not at all sure of success. One drawing goes along all right, and another has no resemblance to its subject. I make some errors, too, in the little prince’s height: in one place he is too tall and in another too short. And I feel some doubts about the cooler of his costume. So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope generally fair-to- middling.
In certain more important details I shall make mistakes, also. But that is something that will not be my fault. My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like himself. But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.

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As each day passed I would learn, in our talk, something about the little prince’s planet, his departure from it, his journey. The information would come very slowly, as it might chance to fall from his thoughts. It was in this way that I heard, on the third day, about the catastrophe of the
baobabs.
This time, once more, I had the sheep to thank for it. For the little prince asked me abruptly –as if seized by a grave doubt- “It is true, isn’t it, that sheep eat little bushes?”
“Yes, that is true.” “Ah! I am glad!”
I did not understand why it was so important that sheep should eat little bushes. But the little prince added:
“Then it follows that they also eat baobabs?”
I pointed out to the little prince that baobabs were not little bushes, but, on the contrary, trees as big as castles; and that even if he took a whole herd of elephants away with him, the herd would not eat up one single baobab.
The idea of the herd of elephants made the little prince laugh.
“We would have to put them one on top of the other,” he said.
But he made a wise comment:
“Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little.”
“That is strictly correct,” I said. “But why do you want the sheep to eat the little baobabs?”
He answered me at once, “Oh, come, come!”, as if he were speaking of something that was self-evident. And I was obliged to make a great mental effort to solve this problem, without any assistance.
Indeed, as I learned, there were on the planet where the little prince lived –as on all planets- good plants and bad plants. In consequence, there were good seeds from good plants, and bad seeds from bad plants. But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken. Then this little seed will stretch itself and begin –timidly at first- to push a charming little sprig inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.
Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces…
“It is a question of discipline,” the little prince said to me later on. “When you’ve finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you

pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rose-bushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work,” the little prince added, “but very easy.”
And one day he said to me: “You ought to make a beautiful drawing, so that the children where you live can see exactly how all this is. That would be very useful to them if they were to travel some day. Sometimes there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day. But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet that was inhabited by a lazy man. He neglected three little bushes…”

So, as the little prince described it to me, I have made a drawing of that planet. I do not much like to take the tone of a moralist. But the danger of the baobabs is so little understood, and such considerable risks would be run by anyone who might get lost on an asteroid, that for once I am breaking through my reserve. “Children,” I say plainly, “watch out for the baobabs!”
My friends, like myself, have been skirting this danger for a long time, without ever knowing it; and so it is for them that I have worked so hard over this drawing. The lesson which I pass on by this means it worth all the trouble it has cost me.
Perhaps you will ask me, “Why there are no other drawings in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs?”
The reply is simple. I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity.

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Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life… For a long time you had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset. I learned that new detail on the
morning of the fourth day, when you said to me:
“I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now.”
“But he must wait,” I said. “Wait? For what?”
“For the sunset. We must wait until it is time.”
At first you seemed to be very much surprised. And then you laughed to yourself. You said to me:
“I am always thinking that I am at home!”
Just so. Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States of America the sun is setting over France. If you could fly to France in one minute, you could go straight into the sunset, right from noon. Unfortunately, France is too far away for that. But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like…
“One day,” you said to me, “I saw the sunset forty-four

times!”


sad…”


And a little later you added:
“You know –one loves the sunset, when one is so

“Were you so sad, then?” I asked, “on the day of the

forty-four sunsets?”
But the little prince made no reply.

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On the fifth day –again, as always, it was thanks to the sheep- the secret of the little prince’s life was revealed
to me. Abruptly, without anything to lead up to it, and as if the question had been born of long and silent meditation on his problem, he demanded:
“A sheep –if it eats little bushes, does it eat flowers,

too?” reach.”

“A sheep,” I answered, “eats anything it finds in its “Even flowers that have thorns?”
“Yes, even flowers that have thorns.” “Then the thorns –what use are they?”
I did not know. At that moment I was very busy trying

to unscrew a bolt that had got stuck in my engine. I was very much worried, for it was becoming clear to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremely serious. And I had so little drinking water lest that I had to fear the worst.
“The thorns – what use are they?”
The little prince never let go of a question, once he had asked it. As for me, I was upset over that bolt. And I answered with the first thing that came into my head:
“The thorns are of no use at all. Flowers have thorns just for spite!”
“Oh!”
There was a moment of complete silence. Then the little prince flashed back at me, with a kind of resentfulness:
“I don’t believe you! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naïve. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons…”
I did not answer. At that instant I was saying to myself:
“If this bolt still won’t turn, I am going to knock it out with the hammer.” Again the little prince disturbed my thoughts:
“And you actually believe that the flowers -”
“Oh, no!” I cried. “No, no, no! I don’t believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that came into my head. Don’t you see – I am very busy with matters of consequence!”
He stared at me, thunderstruck. “Matters of consequence!”
He looked at me there, with my hammer in my hand, my fingers black with engine-grease, bending down over an object which seemed to him extremely ugly…
“You talk just like the grown-ups!”
That made me a little ashamed. But he went on, relentlessly:
“You mix everything up together… You confuse everything…”
He was really very angry. He tossed his golden curls in the breeze.
“I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man – he is a mushroom!”
“A what?”
“A mushroom!”
The little prince was now white with rage.
“The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same. And it is not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them? Is the warfare
between the sheep and the flowers not important? Is this not of more consequence than a fat red-faced gentleman’s sums? And if I know – I, myself – one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing – Oh! You think that is not important!”
His face turned from white to red as he continued:
“If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself: ‘Somewhere, my flower is there…’ But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened… And you think that is not important!”
He could not say anything more. His words were choked by sobbing.
The night had fallen. I had let my tools drop from my hands. Of what moment now was my hammer, my bolt, or thirst, or death? On one star, one planet, my planet, the Earth, there was a little prince to be comforted. I took him in my arms, and rocked him. I said to him:
“The flower that you love is not in danger. I will draw you a muzzle for your sheep. I will draw you a railing to put around your flower. I will-”
I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more.
It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

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Isoon learned to know this flower better. On the little prince’s planet the flowers had always been very simple. They had only one ring of petals; they took up no room at all; they were a trouble to nobody. One morning they would appear in the grass, and by night they would have faded peacefully away. But one day, from a seed blown from no one knew where, a new flower had come up; and the little prince had watched very closely over this small sprout which was not like any other small sprouts on his planet. It might, you
see, have been a new kind of baobab.
But the shrub soon stopped growing, and began to get ready to produce a flower. The little prince, who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it. But the flower was not satisfied to complete the preparations for her beauty in the shelter of her green chamber. She chose her colours with the greatest care. She dressed herself slowly. She adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies. It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear. Oh, yes! She was a coquettish creature! And her mysterious adornment lasted for days and days.
Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly
showed herself.
And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said:
“Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you will excuse me. My petals are still all disarranged…”
But the little prince could not restrain his admiration: “Oh! How beautiful you are!”
“Am I not?” the flower responded, sweetly. “And I was born at the same moment as the sun…”
The little prince could guess easily enough that she was not any too modest – but now moving – and exciting – she was!
“I think it is time for breakfast,” she added an instant later. “If you would have the kindness to think of my needs-”
And the little prince, completely abashed, went to look for a sprinkling-can of fresh water. So, he tended the flower.
So, too, she began very quickly to torment him with her vanity – which was, if the truth be known, a little difficult to deal with. One day, for instance, when she was speaking of her four thorns, she said to the little prince:
“Let the tigers come with their clows!”
“There are no tigers on my planet,” the little prince objected. “And, anyway, tigers do not eat weeds.”
“I am not a weed,” the flower replied, sweetly. “Please excuse me…”
“I am not at all afraid of tigers,” she went on, “but I have a horror of draughts. I suppose you wouldn’t have a screen for me?”
“A horror of draughts – that is bad luck, for a plant,” remarked the little prince, and added to himself, “This flower is a very complex creature…”

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“At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place where I came from -”
But she interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed. She could not have known anything of any other worlds. Embarrassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naïve untruth, she coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.
“The screen?”
“I was just going to look for it when you spoke to me…”
Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same.
So the little prince, in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from his love, had soon come to doubt her. He had taken
seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy.
“I ought not to have listened to her,” he confided to me one day. “One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed my so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.”
And he continued his confidences:
“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…”