Todos Contra Matias!!!

The Little Prince - Part 3

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CHAPTER 17

When one wishes to appear witty 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. Man occupies very little space on Earth. If the two billion persons who inhabit it´s surface were all to stand upright and somewhat crowded together as they would for some big public assembly, they all could easily be enclosed into a square twenty miles long and twenty miles wide. All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific island.

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 confidence in me.

When the little prince arrived on 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 streak of gold, the color of the moonlight, flashed across the sand.

“Good evening,” said the little prince courteously.

“Good evening,” said the snake.

“Which planet is this on which I have come down?” asked the little prince.

“This is the planet Earth; this is Africa,” the snake answered.

“Ah! Then there exist no people on Earth?”

“This is the desert. There are no people in the desert. 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 so bright 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 humans?” the little prince at last took up the conversation again. “It feels a little lonely in the desert…”

“It feels also lonely when being among humans,” the snake said.

The little prince gazed at it for a long time.

“You are a funny animal,” he said at last. “You are no wider than a finger…”

“But I am more powerful than the finger of any king,” said the snake.

The little prince smiled.

“You are not very powerful. You don´t even have feet. You cannot even travel…”

“I can carry you farther away than any ship could take you,” said the snake.

It entwined itself around the little prince’s ankle, like a golden bracelet.

“Whomever I touch, I send back to the place from where he came,” the snake spoke again. “But you are innocent and true, and you do come from a star…”

The little prince made no reply.

“You make me feel pity for you, 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?”

“I solve them all,” said the snake.

And they went both silent.

*****

CHAPTER 18

The little prince crossed the desert and met with only one flower. It was a flower with three petals, a flower of no importance at all.

“Good morning,” said the little prince.

“Good morning,” said the flower.

“Where are the humans?” the little prince asked, politely.

The flower had once seen a caravan passing by in the distance.

“Humans?” she echoed. “I think there exist six or seven of them, 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.

*****

CHAPTER 19

After that, the little prince climbed a high mountain. The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which reached 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 sharp 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 strange planet!” he thought. “It is altogether dry, and altogether rugged, 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…”

*****

CHAPTER 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 places where the people live.

“Good morning,” he said.

He was standing before a garden, all a-bloom with roses.

“Good morning,” said the roses.

The little prince stared 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, or 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 reach 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.

*****

CHAPTER 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, ‘to tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“I am looking for the humans,” said the little prince. “What does that mean, ‘to tame’?”

“Humans,” 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, ‘to 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 for you. And you, from your part, have no need for 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 the world. To you, I shall be unique in 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 Earth one can find all sorts of things.”

“Oh, but this is not on 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; the humans hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the humans 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 memory of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”

The fox stared at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please, tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I do not have 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. “The humans 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 the humans 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.”

“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 tell you 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 embarassed.

“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 by 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 right; the essential is invisible to the eye.”

“The essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have spent for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have spent for my rose,…” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“The humans 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.

*****

CHAPTER 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 seem to be 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.

*****

CHAPTER 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.”

*****

CHAPTER 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 left 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…

“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 replied:

“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 understanding 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 to my memory:

“Then you are thirsty, too?” I demanded.

But he did not reply to my question. He merely said:

“Water can 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 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, to 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 urge to protect him, as if he himself were a flame that might be extinguished by a little gust of wind…

And, as I walked on, I found the well, at daybreak.

(Again, because of the character limit this story will be continued and finsihed with Part 4)