Today came the news from him that Matias read the following book various times, what can me make from that?

Me acaba de llegar la noticia sobre un libro que Matias supuestamente ha leido varias vezes, que podemos deducir de esto?

.

The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The Little Prince Cover

TO LEON WERTH

I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this book for dedicating it to a grown-up. I have a serious reason: He is the best friend I have in the world. I have another reason: This grown-up understands everything, even books about children. I have a third reason: He lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs cheering up. If all these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the book to the child from whom this grown-up grew. All grown-ups were once children, although few of them remember it. And so I correct my dedication:

TO LEON WERTH
WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY

********

CHAPTER 1

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.

In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey in whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.”

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: “Frighten? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?”

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:

The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetics, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So then I chose another profession, and I learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At the first glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of my life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, from close by. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all a bit brighter, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, by doing so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:

“That is a hat.”

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

*****

CHAPTER 2

So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago. Something in my engine broke. And as I neither was accompanied by a mechanic nor by any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repair all alone. It was a question of life or death for me: I had hardly enough drinking water to last a week.

The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said:

“Please, draw me a sheep!”

“What!?”

“Draw me a sheep!”

I jumped to my feet, completely thunderstruck. I blinked my eyes hard. I looked carefully all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary little person, who stood there examining me with great seriousness. Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model:

That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter’s career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.

Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly popping out of my head in astonishment.

Remember, I had crashed in the desert, a thousand miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation.

When at last I was able to speak  again, I said to him:

“But — what are you doing here?”

And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence:

“Please, draw me a sheep…”

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw.

He answered: “That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep . . .”

But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with:

“No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep.”

So then I made a drawing.

He looked at it carefully, then he said:

“No. This sheep is already very sick. Make me another.”

So I made another drawing.

My friend smiled gently and indulgently.

“You see yourself,” he said, “that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns.”

So then I did my drawing over once more…

But it was rejected too, just like the others.

“This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time.”

By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed out this drawing:

And I spit out an explanation with it: “This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.”

I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:

“That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will need a lot of grass?”

“Why?”

“Because where I live everything is very small…”

“There will surely be enough grass for him,” I said. “It is a very small sheep that I have given you.”

He bent his head over the drawing: “Not so small that… But look! It has gone to sleep…”

And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.

*****

CHAPTER 3

It took me a long time to learn where he came from. The little prince, who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones I asked him. It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me.

The first time he saw my airplane, for instance (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too complicated for me), he asked me:

“What is that thing?”

“That is not a “thing”. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane.”

And I was proud to tell him that I could fly.

He cried out, then:

“What! You fell down from the sky?”

“Yes,” I answered, modestly.

“Oh! That is funny!”

And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.

Then he added:

“So you, too, come from the sky! Which is your planet?”

At that moment I caught a glimpse of the impenetrable mystery of his presence; and I demanded, abruptly:

“Do you come from another planet?”

But he did not reply. He tossed his head gently, without taking his eyes from my plane:

“True, on that thing you can’t have come from very far away…”

And he sank into a silence, which lasted a long time. Then, taking my sheep out of his pocket, he buried himself in the contemplation of his treasure.

You can imagine how my curiosity was aroused by this half-sentence about the “other planets.” I made a great effort, therefore, to find out more on this subject.

“My little man, where do you come from? What is this ‘where I live’, of which you speak? Where do you want to take my sheep?”

After a reflective silence he answered:

“The good thing about the box you have given me is that at night it can serve as it´s house.”

“That is so. And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so that you can tie it during the day, and a post to tie it to.”

But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer:

“Tie it!? What a strange idea!”

“But if you don’t tie it,” I said, “it will wander off to somewhere and get lost.”

My friend broke into another peal of laughter:

“But where do you think it would go?”

“Anywhere. Straight ahead.”

Then the little prince said, in an earnest tone:

“That doesn’t matter. Where I live, everything is so small…”

And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:

“Straight ahead, one cannot walk very far…”

*****

CHAPTER 4

It was so that I learned a second fact of great importance: 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 big planets - as Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus - which have names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through a telescope. When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name but just a number. He might call it, for example, “Asteroid 325.”

I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince originated is the asteroid known as B-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 dressed in Turkish style, 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 penalty of death, should change to European dress code. 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 account of the grown-ups and their ways.

When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about the essential matters. They never ask 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 red 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 $20,000.” 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 to 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 alone with their questions.

They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance towards 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 was in need of a sheep . . .”

To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story.

For 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, after never having done 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 color of his costume. So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, but I hope generally fair enough.

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 up.

*****

CHAPTER 5

As each day passed I would learn  something else about the little prince’s planet, his departure from it, his journey. The informations would trickle as if by chance from his thoughts. It was in this way that I heard, on the third day, about the baobab catastrophe.

This time, once more, I had the sheep to thank for it. For the little prince asked me abruptly - as if disturbed by a grave doubt - “It is true, isn’t it, that sheep eat small bushes?”

“Yes, that is true.”

“Ah! I am glad!”

I did not understand why it was so important that sheep should eat small bushes. But the little prince added:

“Consequently, 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 remarked with certain wit:

“Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being small.”

“That is definitely correct,” I said. “But why do you want the sheep to eat the small baobabs?”

He answered me at once, “Oh, come on, come on…!”, as if we 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, on the planet where the little prince lived - as on all planets - existed 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 one among them is inspirited 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 eradicate 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 told 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 the same, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you regularly pull out 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 not very difficult.”

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 works. That would be very useful to them if they were to travel some day. Sometimes,” he added, “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 disaster. 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 on 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 overcoming my reserve. “Children,” I say plainly, “watch out for the baobabs!”

My friends, like myself, have been ignoring this danger for a long time, without ever knowing it; and so it is for them that I have worked so hard on this drawing. The lesson which I pass on by this is worth all the trouble it has cost me:

Perhaps you will ask me, “Why are there 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 urgence.

*****

CHAPTER 6

Ah, my little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your melancholic 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 love sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset.”

“But we have to wait,” I said.

“Wait? For what?”

“For the sunset. We must wait until it is time.”

At first you seemed to be very surprised. And then you laughed to yourself. You said to me:

“I always keep thinking that I was at home!”

It is like this: Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States 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 feet. 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!”

And a little later you added:

“You know - one loves the sunset, when one is so sad…”

“Were you so sad, then?” I asked, “on the day of the forty-four sunsets?”

But the little prince did not reply.

*****

CHAPTER 7

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, out of the blue, and as if the question had been born from long and silent meditation, he demanded:

“A sheep–if it eats small bushes, does it eat flowers, too?”

“A sheep”, I answered, “eats anything it finds in its reach.”

“Even flowers that have thorns?”

“Yes, even flowers that have thorns.”

“Then the thorns–what are they good for?”

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 worried, for it was dawning to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremely serious. And I had so little drinking water left that I had to fear for 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 stuck 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 lashed 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 won’t turn, I am going to have to knock it out with the hammer.”

Again the little prince disturbed my thoughts:

“And you actually believe that the flowers …”

“Oh, no!” I shouted. “No, no, no! I don’t believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that crossed my mind. Don’t you see: I am very busy with matters of real consequence!”

He stared at me, thunderstruck.

“Matters of consequence!?”

He looked at me there, with my hammer in my hand, my fingers black from oil, 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 into one… You confuse everything…!”

He was really very angry. He tossed his golden curls about 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 at 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 you say 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 knew - 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 it 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 there, my flower is there . . .’ But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be dimmed . . . And you think that is not important!?”

He could not say anything more. His words were drowned by sobbing.

Nnight had fallen. I let my tools drop from my hands. Of what importance now was my hammer, my bolt, or thirst, or death? On one star, one planet, my planet, Earth, there was a little prince to be comforted. I took him in my arms, and rocked him gently. 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 fence to put around your flower. I will…”

I did not know what else to say to him. I felt arkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where to join him.

It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.

*****

CHAPTER 8

I soon 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.

The shrub soon stopped growing, and began to prepare 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 colors with the greatest care. She dressed herself slowly. She adjusted her petals one by one. She did not wish to present herself to 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 displayed herself.

And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said:

“Ah! I am hardly 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 really overly modest… but how exciting she was!

“I think it is time for breakfast,” she added an instant later. “If you would have the kindness to think of me…?”

And the little prince, completely confused, went to look for a  watering can of fresh water to attend the flower.

And so, she began fairly quickly to torment him with her vanity and touchiness. One day, for instance, when she was talking about her four thorns, she said to the little prince:

“Let them come, the tigers, with their claws!”

“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 air currents. I suppose you wouldn’t have a wind screen for me?”

“Horror of air currents… that is bad luck, for a plant,” remarked the little prince, and thought by himself, “This flower is very complicated…”

“At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place 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. Embarassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naïve lie, she coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.

“Errhmm… The screen ..?”

“I was just going to look for it, but you talked to me…”

On this she forced her cough a little more so that he should feel remorse all the same.

So the little prince, in spite of all his good intention 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 enjoy their smell. Mine made all my planet smell so nice. But I did not know how to find pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me 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 her by her deeds and not by her words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her…. I ought to have intuited all the affection that lay behind her poor little games. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her…”

*****

CHAPTER 9

I believe that for his escape he used a flock of wild birds. On the morning of his departure he put his planet in perfect shape. He carefully cleaned out his active volcanoes. He possessed two active volcanoes; and they were very convenient for heating his breakfast in the morning. He also had one volcano that was extinct. But, as he said, “One never knows!” So he cleaned out the extinct volcano, too. If they are well cleaned out, volcanoes burn slowly and steadily, without any eruptions. Volcanic eruptions are like fires in a chimney. On our earth we are obviously much too small to clean out our volcanoes. That is why they cause endless trouble for us.

The little prince also pulled out, with a certain sense of dejection, the last little shoots of the baobabs. He believed that he would never want to return. But on this last morning all these familiar tasks seemed very precious to him. And when he watered the flower for the last time, and prepared to place her under the shelter of her glass globe, he realized that he was very close to tears.

“Goodbye,” he said to the flower.

But she did not answer.

“Goodbye,” he said again.

The flower coughed. But it was not because she had a cold.

“I have been silly,” she said to him, at last. “I ask you to forgive me. Try to be happy . . .”

He was surprised by this absence of reproaches. He stood there all bewildered, the glass globe suspended in mid-air. He did not understand this quiet sweetness.

“Of course I love you,” the flower said to him. “It is my fault that you have not known it all the while. That is of no importance. But you - you have been just as foolish as I. Try to be happy . . . Let the glass globe be. I don’t need it any more.”

“But the wind…?”

“My cold is not so bad… The cool night air will do me good. I am a flower.”

“But the animals…!”

“Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to get to know butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful. And if not the butterflies - and the caterpillars - who will call upon me? You will be far away… As for the large animals, I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws.”

And, naïvely, she showed her four thorns. Then she added:

“Don’t linger around longer. You have decided to go away. Now go!”

For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower…

*****

For technical reasons this article cannot be any longer, so … go on reading here.

*****

]]> http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/199/feed http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/233 http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/233#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:29:51 +0000 Admin http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/?p=233 *****

CHAPTER 10

He found himself in the vicinity of the asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, and 330. He began, therefore, by visiting them, in order to add to his knowledge.

The first of them was inhabited by a king. Clad in royal purple and ermine, he was seated upon a throne which was at the same time both simple and majestic.

“Ah! Here comes a subject,” exclaimed the king, when he saw the little prince coming.

And the little prince asked himself:

“How could he recognize me when he has never seen me before?”

He did not know how simple the world is for kings. To them, all persons are subjects.

“Approach, so that I may see you better,” said the king, who felt profoundly proud of being at last a king over somebody.

The little prince looked everywhere to find a place to sit down; but the entire planet was crammed and obstructed by the king’s magnificent ermine robe. So he remained standing upright, and, since he was tired, he yawned.

“It is against etiquette to yawn in the presence of a king,” the monarch said to him. “I forbid you to do so.”

“I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself,” replied the little prince, thoroughly embarrassed. “I have come on a long journey, and I have had no sleep…”

“Ah, then,” the king said. “I order you to yawn. It is years since I have seen anyone yawning. Yawns, to me, are objects of curiosity. Come, now! Yawn again! It is an order.”

“That frightens me… I cannot, any more…” murmured the little prince, now completely confused.

“Hmm… Hmm!” replied the king. “Then I - I order you sometimes to yawn and sometimes to…”
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 become 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 - what exactly do you rule over?”

“Over everything,” said the king, with magnificent simplicity.

“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, without 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 favour… Order the sun to set…”

“If I ordered a general to fly from flower to flower like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to become 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 must 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.

“Hmm… Hmm!”replied the king; and before saying anything else he consulted a bulky almanac. “Hmm… Hmm! 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 feel a little bored.

“I have nothing more to do here,” he said to the king. “So I shall set off on my yourney 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 coach. 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.
“Hmm… Hmm!” 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 sensibly. 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 get on my way.”

“No,” said the king.

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, “you should give me a reasonable order. You should, for example, order me to be gone by the end of one minute. It seems to me that conditions are favorable…”

As the king did not reply, the little prince hesitated a moment. Then, with a sigh, he left.

“I make 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.

*****

CHAPTER 11

The second planet was inhabited by a vain man.

“Ah! Ah! I am about to receive a visit from an admirer!” he exclaimed from afar, when he first saw the little prince coming.

For, to the vain, all other persons are admirers.

“Good morning,” said the little prince. “That is a strange hat you are wearing.”

“It is a hat for salutes,” the vain man replied. “It is to raise in salute when people acclaim me. Unfortunately, nobody at all ever passes this way.”

“Yes?” said the little prince, who did not understand what the vain man was talking about.

“Clap your hands, one against the other,” the vain man now directed him.

The little prince clapped his hands. The vain man raised his hat in a modest salute.

“This is more entertaining than the visit to the king,” the little prince said to himself. And he began again to clap his hands, one against the other. The vain man again raised his hat in salute.

After five minutes of this exercise the little prince grew tired of the game’s monotony.

“And what should one do to make the hat come down?” he asked.

But the vain man did not hear him. Vain people never hear anything but praise.

“Do you really admire me very much?” he demanded of the little prince.

“What does that mean, ‘admire’?”

“To admire means that you regard me as the handsomest, the best-dressed, the richest, and the most intelligent man on this planet.”

“But you are the only man on your planet!”

“Do me this kindness. Admire me just the same.”

“I admire you,” said the little prince, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “but what is there in that to interests you so much?”

And the little prince left.

“The grown-ups are certainly very odd,” he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.

*****

CHAPTER 12

The next planet was inhabited by a drinker. This was a very short visit, but it left the little prince very depressed.

“What are you doing there?” he said to the drinker, whom he encountered sitting in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.

“I am drinking,” replied the drinker, with a lugubrious air.

“Why are you drinking?” demanded the little prince.

“To forget,” replied the drinker.

“To forget what?” inquired the little prince, who already felt sorry for him.

“To forget that I am ashamed,” the drinker confessed, hanging his head.

“Ashamed of what?” insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.

“Ashamed because I am drinking!” The drinker brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.

And the little prince went away, puzzled.

“The grown-ups are certainly very, very strange,” he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.

*****

CHAPTER 13

The fourth planet belonged to a businessman. This man was so very occupied that he did not even raise his head at the little prince’s arrival.

“Good morning,” the little prince said to him. “Your cigarette has died.”

“Three plus two make five. Five plus seven make twelve. Twelve plus three make fifteen. Good morning. Fifteen plus seven make twenty-two. Twenty-two plus six make twenty-eight. I don´t have time to light it again. Twenty-six and five make thirty-one. Phew! Then that makes a total of five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two-thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one.”

“Five hundred million of what?” asked the little prince.

“Eh? Are you still there? Five-hundred-and-one million… I can’t stop… I have so much to do! I am concerned with matters of consequence. I don’t amuse myself with gibberish. Two plus five make seven…”

“Five-hundred-and-one million of what?” repeated the little prince, who never in his life had let go of a question once he had asked it.

The businessman raised his head.

“During the fifty-four years that I have inhabited this planet, I have been disturbed only three times. The first time was twenty-two years ago, when some giddy goose fell from goodness knows where. It made the most frightful noise that resounded all over the place, and I made four mistakes in my addition. The second time, eleven years ago, I was disturbed by an attack of rheumatism. I don’t get enough exercise. I have no time for loafing. The third time… well, this is it! I was saying, then, five-hundred-and-one millions…”

“Millions of what?”

The businessman suddenly realized that there was no hope of being left in peace until he answered this question.

“Millions of those little objects,” he said, “which one sometimes sees in the sky.”

“Flies?”

“Oh, no. Little, glittering objects.”

“Bees?”

“Oh, no. Little golden objects that make lazy men idle dreamers. As for me, I am concerned with matters of consequence. There is no time for idle dreaming in my life.”

“Ah! You mean the stars?”

“Yes, that’s it. The stars.”

“And what do you do with five-hundred millions of stars?”

“Five-hundred-and-one million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one. I am concerned with matters of consequence: I am accurate.”

“And what do you do with these stars?”

“What do I do with them?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing. I own them.”

“You own the stars?”

“Yes.”

“But I have already seen a king who…”

“Kings do not “own”, they “reign over”. It is a completely different matter.”

“And what good does it do you to own the stars?”

“It does me the good of making me rich.”

“And what good does it do you to be rich?”

“It makes it possible for me to buy more stars, if any are discovered.”

“This man,” the little prince said to himself, “reasons a little like my poor drinker…”

Still, he had some more questions.

“How is it possible for one to own the stars?”

“To whom do they belong?” the businessman retorted, peevishly.

“I don’t know. To nobody.”

“Then they belong to me, because I was the first person to think of owning them.”

“Is that all that is necessary?”

“Certainly. When you find a diamond that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you discover an island that belongs to nobody, it is yours. When you have an idea before any one else has it, you take out a patent on it: it is yours. So it is with me: I own the stars, because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them.”

“Yes, that is true,” said the little prince. “And what do you do with them?”

“I administer them,” replied the businessman. “I count them and recount them. It is difficult. But I am a man who is naturally interested in matters of consequence.”

The little prince was still not satisfied.

“If I owned a silk scarf,” he said, “I could put it around my neck and take it away with me. If I owned a flower, I could pluck that flower and take it away with me. But you cannot pluck the stars from heaven…”
“No. But I can put them in the bank.”

“Whatever does that mean?”

“That means that I write the number of my stars on a little paper. And then I put this paper in a drawer and lock it with a key.”

“And that is all?”

“That is enough,” said the businessman.

“It is entertaining,” thought the little prince. “It is rather poetic. But it is of no great consequence.”

On matters of consequence, the little prince had ideas which were very different from those of the grown-ups.

“I myself own a flower,” he continued his conversation with the businessman, “which I water every day. I own three volcanoes, which I clean out every week (for I also clean out the one that is extinct; one never knows). It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them. But you are of no use to the stars…!?”

The businessman opened his mouth, but he found nothing to say in answer. And the little prince left.

“The grown-ups are certainly altogether extraordinarily strange,” he said simply, talking to himself as he continued on his journey.

*****

CHAPTER 14

The fifth planet was very strange. It was the smallest of all. There was just enough room on it for a street lamp and a lamplighter. The little prince was not able to reach any conclusion as to the use of a street lamp and a lamplighter, somewhere in the heavens, on a planet which had no people, and not one house. But he said to himself, nevertheless:

“It may well be that this man is absurd. But he is not so absurd as the king, the vain, the businessman, and the drinker. For at least his work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.”

When he arrived on the planet he respectfully saluted the lamplighter.

“Good morning. Why have you just put out your lamp?”

“Those are the orders,” replied the lamplighter. “Good morning.”

“What are the orders?”

“The orders are that I put out my lamp. Good evening.”

And he lighted his lamp again.

“But why have you just lighted it again?”

“Those are the orders,” replied the lamplighter.

“I do not understand,” said the little prince.

“There is nothing to understand,” said the lamplighter. “Orders are orders. Good morning.”

And he put out his lamp.

Then he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief decorated with red squares.

“I have a terrible profession. In the old days it was reasonable. I put the lamp out in the morning, and in the evening I lighted it again. I had the rest of the day for relaxation and the rest of the night for sleep.”

“And the orders have been changed since that time?”

“The orders have not been changed,” said the lamplighter. “That is the tragedy! From year to year the planet has gone to turn more rapidly and the orders have not been changed!”

“Then what?” asked the little prince.

“Then… the planet now makes a complete turn every minute, and I no longer have a single second for repose. Once every minute I have to light my lamp and put it out!”

“That is very funny! A day lasts only one minute, here where you live!”

“It is not funny at all!” said the lamplighter. “While we have been talking together a month has gone by.”
“A month?”

“Yes, a month. Thirty minutes. Thirty days. Good evening.”

And he lighted his lamp again.

As the little prince watched him, he felt that he loved this lamplighter who was so faithful to his orders. He remembered the sunsets which he himself had gone to seek, in other days, merely by pulling up his chair; and he wanted to help his friend.

“You know,” he said, “I can tell you a way you can rest whenever you want to…”

“I always want to rest,” said the lamplighter.

For it is possible for a man to be faithful and lazy at the same time.

The little prince went on with his explanation:

“Your planet is so small that three strides will take you all the way around it. To be always in the sunshine, you need only walk along rather slowly. When you want to rest, you walk… and the day will last as long as you like.”

“That doesn’t do me much good,” said the lamplighter. “The one thing I love in life is to sleep.”

“Then you’re unlucky,” said the little prince.

“I am unlucky,” said the lamplighter. “Good morning.”

And he put out his lamp.

“That man,” said the little prince to himself, as he continued farther on his journey, “that man would be scorned by all the others: by the king, by the vain man, by the drinker, by the businessman. Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem ridiculous to me. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself.”

He breathed a sigh of regret, and said to himself, again:

“That man is the only one of them all whom I could have made my friend. But his planet is indeed too small. There is no room on it for two people…”

What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because every day it wast blessed with 1440 sunsets!

*****

CHAPTER 15

The sixth planet was ten times larger than the last one. It was inhabited by an old gentleman who wrote voluminous books.

“Oh, look! Here comes an explorer!” he exclaimed to himself when he saw the little prince coming.
The little prince sat down at the table and panted a little. He had already been traveling so long!

“Where do you come from?” the old gentleman said to him.

“What is that big book?” asked the little prince. “What are you doing?”

“I am a geographer,” said the old gentleman.

“What does “geographer” mean?” asked the little prince.

“A geographer is a wise man who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts.”

“That is very interesting,” said the little prince. And to himself: “Here at last is a man who has a real profession!” And he cast a look around him at the planet of the geographer. It was the most majestic planet that he had ever seen.

“Your planet is very beautiful,” he said. “Does it have any oceans?”

“I don´t know” said the geographer.

“Ah!” The little prince was disappointed. “Does it have any mountains?”

“I would not know” said the geographer.

“And towns, and rivers, and deserts?”

“I don´t know that, either.”

“But you are a geographer!”

“Exactly,” the geographer said. “But I am not an explorer. I don´t have a single explorer on my planet. It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans and the deserts. The geographer is much too important to go ropaming about. He does not leave his desk. But he receives the explorers in his study. He asks them questions, and he notes down what they report of their travels. And if the recollections of any one among them seem interesting to him, the geographer orders an inquiry into that explorer’s moral character.”

“Why is that?”

“Because an explorer who told lies would bring disaster on the books of the geographer. So would an explorer who drank too much.”

“Why is that?” asked the little prince.

“Because drunk men see double. Then the geographer would note down two mountains in a place where there was only one.”

“I know someone,” said the little prince, “who would make a bad explorer.”

“That is possible. Then, when the moral status of the explorer is shown to be good, an inquiry is ordered into his discovery.”

“One takes look at it?”

“No. That would be too complicated. But one requires the explorer to provide proof. For example, if the discovery in question is that of a large mountain, one requires that large stones be brought back from it.”

The geographer was suddenly stirred to excitement.

“But you, you come from far away! You are an explorer! You shall describe your planet to me!”
And, having opened his big register, the geographer sharpened his pencil. The recitals of explorers are put down first in pencil. One waits until the explorer has provided proof, before putting them down in ink.

“Well?” said the geographer expectantly.

“Oh, where I live,” said the little prince, “it is not very interesting. It is all so small. I own three volcanoes. Two volcanoes are active and the other is extinct. But one never knows.”

“One never knows,” said the geographer.

“I do also own a flower.”

“We do not record flowers,” said the geographer.

“Why is that? The flower is the most beautiful thing on my planet!”

“We do not record them,” said the geographer, “because they are ephemeral.”

“What does that mean, ‘ephemeral’?”

“Geographic books,” said the geographer, “are the books which, of all books, are most concerned with matters of consequence. They never become old-fashioned. It is very rare that a mountain would change its position. It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of its waters. We write of eternal things.”

“But extinct volcanoes may come to life again,” the little prince interrupted. “What does that mean, ‘ephemeral’?”

“Whether volcanoes are extinct or alive, it comes to the same thing for us,” said the geographer. “The thing that matters to us is the mountain. It does not change.”

“But what does that mean, ‘ephemeral’?” repeated the little prince, who never in his life had let go of a question, once he had asked it.

“It means, ‘is in danger of sudden disappearance.’”

“Is my flower in danger of sudden disappearance?”

“Certainly it is.”

“My flower is ephemeral,” the little prince said to himself, “and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!”

That was his first moment of regret. But he took courage once more.

“What place would you advise me to visit now?” he asked.

“The planet Earth,” replied the geographer. “It has a good reputation.”

And the little prince went away, thinking of his flower.

*****

CHAPTER 16

So then the seventh planet was Earth.

Earth is not just an ordinary planet! One can find there, 111 kings (not forgetting, to be sure, the Negro kings among them), 7.000 geographers, 900.000 businessmen, 7.500.000 drinkers, 311.000.000 vain men, that is to say, about 2.000.000.000 grown-ups.

To give you an idea of the size of the Earth, I will tell you that before the invention of electricity it was necessary to maintain, over the whole of the six continents, a veritable army of 462.511 lamplighters for the street lamps.

Seen from a slight distance, that would make a splendid spectacle. The movements of this army would be regulated like those of the ballet in the opera. First would come the turn of the lamplighters of New Zealand and Australia. Having set their lamps alight, these would go off to sleep. Next, the lamplighters of China and Siberia would enter for their turns in the dance, and then they too would be waved back into the wings. After that would come the turn of the lamplighters of Russia and the Indies; then those of Africa and Europe; then those of South America; then those of North America. And never would they make a mistake in the sequence of their appearance on stage. It would be magnificent.

Only the man who was in charge of the single lamp at the North Pole, and his colleague who was responsible for the single lamp at the South Pole, only these two would live free from stress and care: they would be busy only twice a year.

*****

For character limits to be continued in the next part “The Little Prince, Part 3″…

*****

]]> http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/233/feed http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/250 http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/250#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:15:30 +0000 Admin http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/?p=250 *****

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)

]]> http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/250/feed http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/287 http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/287#comments Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:20:13 +0000 rattler http://todos-contra-matias.net/blog/?p=287 *****

CHAPTER 25

“Men,” said the little prince, “set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round…”

And he added: “It is not worth the trouble…”

The well that we had come to was not like the wells of the Sahara. The wells of the Sahara are mere holes dug in the sand. This one was like a well in a village. But there was no village there, and I thought I was dreaming…

“It is strange,” I said to the little prince. “Everything is ready for use: the pulley, the bucket, the rope…”

He laughed, touched the rope, and set the pulley to working. And the pulley groaned, like an old weathervane which the wind has long since forgotten.

“Do you hear that?” said the little prince. “We have awakened the well, and it is singing…!”

I did not want him to tire himself with the rope.

“Leave it to me,” I said. “It is too heavy for you.”

I hoisted the bucket slowly to the edge of the well and set it there, happy, tired as I was, over my achievement. The song of the pulley was still in my ears, and I could see the sunlight shimmer in the still trembling water.

“I am thirsty for this water,” said the little prince. “Give me some of it to drink…”

And I understood what he had been looking for.

I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. It was as sweet as some special festival treat. This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the Midnight Mass, the tenderness of smiling faces, used to make up, like this, the radiance of the gifts I received.

“The men where you live,” said the little prince, “raise five thousand roses in the same garden - and they do not find in it what they are looking for.”

“They do not find it,” I replied.

“And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water.”

“Yes, that is true,” I said.

And the little prince added:

“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart…”

I had drunk the water. I breathed easily. At sunrise the sand is the color of honey. And that honey color was making me happy, too. What brought me, then, this sense of grief?

“You must keep your promise,” said the little prince, softly, as he sat down beside me once more.

“What promise?”

“You know - a muzzle for my sheep… I am responsible for this flower… “

I took my rough drafts of drawings out of my pocket. The little prince looked them over, and laughed as he said:

“Your baobabs - they look a little like cabbages.”

“Oh!”

And I had been so proud of my baobabs!

“Your fox - his ears look a little like horns; and they are too long.”

And he laughed again.

“You are not fair, little prince,” I said. “I don’t know how to draw anything except boa constrictors from the outside and boa constrictors from the inside.”

“Oh, that will be all right,” he said, “children understand.”

So then I made a pencil sketch of a muzzle. And as I gave it to him my heart was torn.

“You have plans that I do not know about,” I said.

But he did not answer. He said to me, instead:

“You know - my descent to Earth… Tomorrow will be its anniversary.”

Then, after a silence, he went on:

“I came down very close from here.”

And he flushed.

And once again, without understanding why, I had a queer sense of preoccupation. One question, however, occurred to me:

“Then it was not by chance that on the morning when I first met you - a week ago - you were strolling along like that, all alone, a thousand miles from any inhabited region? You were on your way back to the place where you landed?”

The little prince flushed again.

And I added, hesitatingly:

“Perhaps it was because of the anniversary?”

The little prince flushed once more. He never answered questions - but when one flushes does that not mean “Yes”?

“Ah,” I said to him, “I am a little frightened…”

But he interrupted me.

“Now you must work. You must return to your engine. I will be waiting for you here. Come back tomorrow evening…”

But I was not reassured. I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one allows oneself to be tamed…

*****

CHAPTER 26

Beside the well there was the ruin of an old stone wall. When I came back from my work, the next evening, I saw from some distance away my little price sitting on top of a wall, with his feet dangling.

And I heard him say:

“Then you don’t remember. This is not the exact spot.”

Another voice must have answered him, for he replied to it:

“Yes, yes! It is the right day, but this is not the place.”

I continued my walk towards the wall. At no time did I see or hear anyone. The little prince, however, replied once again:

“…Exactly. You will see where my track begins, in the sand. You have nothing to do but wait for me there. I shall be there tonight.”

I was only twenty meters from the wall, and I still saw nothing.

After a silence the little prince spoke again:

“You have good poison? You are sure that it will not make me suffer too long?”

I stopped in my tracks, my heart torn; but still I did not understand.

“Now go away,” said the little prince. “I want to get down from the wall.”

I dropped my eyes, then, to the foot of the wall - and I leaped into the air. There before me, facing the little prince, was one of those yellow snakes that take just thirty seconds to end your life. Even as I was digging into my pocked to get out my revolver I made a running step back. But, at the noise I made, the snake let itself flow easily across the sand like the dying spray of a fountain, and, in no apparent hurry, disappeared, with a light metallic sound, among the stones.

I reached the wall just in time to catch my little man in my arms; his face was white as snow.
“What does this mean?” I demanded. “Why are you talking with snakes?”

I had loosened the golden muffler that he always wore. I had moistened his temples, and had given him some water to drink. And now I did not dare ask him any more questions. He looked at me very gravely, and put his arms around my neck. I felt his heart beating like the heart of a dying bird, shot with someone’s rifle…

“I am glad that you have found what was the matter with your engine,” he said. “Now you can go back home…”

“How do you know about that?”

I was just coming to tell him that my work had been successful, beyond anything that I had dared to hope.

He made no reply to my question, but he added:

“I, too, am going back home today…”

Then, with a sad touch:

“It is much farther… It is much more difficult…”

I realized clearly that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him close in my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong towards an abyss from which I could do nothing to save him…

His look was very serious, like some one lost in thought, far away.

“I have your sheep. And I have the sheep’s box. And I have the muzzle…”

And he gave me a sad smile.

I waited a long time. I could see that he was reviving little by little.

“Dear little man,” I said to him, “you are afraid…”

He was afraid, there was no doubt about that. But he laughed lightly.

“I shall be much more afraid this evening…”

Once again I felt cold by the sense of something irreparable. And I knew that I could not bear the thought of never hearing that laughter again. For me, it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert.
“Little man,” I said, “I want to hear you laugh again.”

But he said to me:

“Tonight, it will be a year… My star, then, can be found right above the place where I came to the Earth, a year ago…”

“Little man,” I said, “tell me that it is only a bad dream - this affair of the snake, and the meeting-place, and the star…”

But he did not answer my plea. He said, instead:

“The thing that is important is the thing that is invisible…”

“Yes, I know…”

“It is just as it is with the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers…”

“Yes, I know…”

“It is just as it is with the water. Because of the pulley, and the rope, what you gave me to drink was like music. You remember how good it was?”

“Yes, I know…”

“And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens… they will all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present…”

He laughed again.

“Ah, little prince, dear little prince! I love to hear that laughter!”

“That is my present. Just that. It will be as it was when we drank the water…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“All men have the stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You - you alone! - will have the stars as no one else has them…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night… You - only you! - will have stars that can laugh!”
And he laughed again.

“And when your pain is comforted (time soothes all pain) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, for that pleasure… And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you…!”

And he laughed again.

“It will be as if, instead of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that all know how to laugh…”

And he laughed again. Then he quickly became serious:

“Tonight - you know… Do not come.”

“I shall not leave you,” I said.

“I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble…”

“I shall not leave you.”

But he was worried.

“I tell you - it is also because of the snake. It must not bite you. Snakes - they are malicious creatures. This one might bite you just for fun …”

“I shall not leave you.”

But a thought came that reassured him:

“It is true that they have no more poison for a second bite.”

That night I did not see him when he set out on his yourney. He got away from me without making a sound. When I succeeded in catching up with him he was walking along with a quick and resolute step.

He merely said:

“Ah! You are there…”

And he took me by the hand. But he was still worryied.

“It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look as if I were dead; and that will not be true…”

I said nothing.

“You understand… it is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy.”

I said nothing.

“But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells…”

I said nothing.

He was a little discouraged. But he made one more effort:

“You know, it will be very nice. I, too, shall look at the stars. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out fresh water for me to drink…”

I said nothing.

“That will be so amusing! You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water…!”

And he, too, said nothing more, becuase he was crying…

“Here it is. Let me go on by myself.”

And he sat down, because he was afraid. Then he said, again:

“You know - my flower… I am responsible for her. And she is so weak! She is so na?ve! She has four thorns, of no use at all, to protect herself against all the world…”

I too sat down, because I was not able to stand any longer.

“There now - that is all…”

He still hesitated a little; then he got up. He took one step. I could not move.

There was nothing but a flash of yellow close to his ankle. He remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand.

*****

CHAPTER 27

And now already six years have gone by… I have never yet told this story. The companions who met me on my return were well content to see me alive. I was sad, but I told them: “I am tired.”

Now my pain is comforted a little. That is to say - not entirely. But I know that he did go back to his planet, because I did not find his body at daybreak. It was not such a heavy body… and at night I love to listen to the stars. It is like five hundred million little bells…

But there is one extraordinary thing… when I drew the muzzle for the little prince, I forgot to add the leather strap to it. He will never have been able to fasten it on his sheep. So now I keep wondering: what is happening on his planet? Perhaps the sheep has eaten the flower …?

At one time I say to myself: “Surely not! The little prince shuts his flower under her glass globe every night, and he watches over his sheep very carefully…” Then I am happy. And there is sweetness in the laughter of all the stars.

But at another time I say to myself: “At some moment or other one is absent-minded, and that is enough! On some one evening he forgot the glass globe, or the sheep got out, without making any noise, in the night…” And then the little bells are changed to tears…

Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has - yes or no? - eaten a rose…

Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: Is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes…

And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!

This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared.

Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognize it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.

I believe in signs. After I had walked the road to Santiago, everything had changed completely: what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect and attention in order to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take next. I also learned a respect for mystery. As Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm.

If it is, then all is well. If not, then we had better change direction.

When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making a mistake. Was the accident a sign?

I decided that the answer to these questions was yes.

And perhaps because of this, because I accepted my destiny and allowed myself to be guided by something greater than myself, I noticed that, during the day, the Zahir began to diminish in intensity. I knew that all I had to do was open the envelope, read her address, and go and knock on her door, but the signs all indicated that this was not the moment. If Esther really was as important in my life as I thought, if she still loved me (as Mikhail said she did), why force a situation that would simply lead me into making the same mistakes I had made in the past?

How to avoid repeating them?

By knowing myself better, by finding out what had changed and what had provoked this sudden break in a road that had always been marked by joy.

Was that enough?

No, I also needed to know who Esther was, what changes she had undergone during the  time we were together.

And was it enough to be able to answer these two questions?

There was a third: Why had fate brought us together?

I had a lot of free time in that hospital room, and so I made a general review of my life. I had always sought both adventure and security, knowing that the two things did not really mix. I was sure of my love for Esther and yet I easily fell in love with other women, merely because the game of seduction is the most interesting game in the world.

Had I shown my wife that I loved her? Perhaps for a while, but not always. Why? Because I didn’t think it was necessary; she must know I loved her; she couldn’t possibly doubt my feelings.

I remember that, many years ago, someone asked me if there was a common denominator among all the various girlfriends I had had in my life. The answer was easy: me. And when I realized this, I saw how much time I had wasted looking for the right person—the women changed, but I remained the same and so got nothing from those shared experiences. I had lots of girlfriends, but I was always waiting for the right person. I controlled and was controlled and the relationship never went any further than that, until Esther arrived and changed everything.

I was thinking tenderly of my ex-wife; I was no longer obsessed with finding her, with finding out why she had left without a word of explanation. A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew had been a true account of my marriage, but it was, above all, my own testimony, declaring that I am capable of loving and needing someone else. Esther deserved more than just words, especially since I had never said those words while we were together.

It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over. Slowly, I began to realize that I could not go back and force things to be as they once were: those two years, which up until then had seemed an endless inferno, were now beginning to show me their true meaning.

-snip-

At no point had the love I felt for Esther diminished, but every day spent in the hospital had brought back some intriguing memory: not of conversations we had had, but of moments we had spent together in silence. I remembered her eyes, which reflected her inner being. Whenever she set off on some new adventure, she was an enthusiastic young girl, or a wife proud of her husband’s success, or a journalist fascinated by every subject she wrote about. Later, she was the wife who no longer seemed to have a place in my life. That look of sadness in her eyes had started before she told me she wanted to be a war
correspondent; it became a look of joy every time she came back from an assignment, but it was only a matter of days before the look of sadness returned.

-snip-

He left me his cell phone number, and when I hung up, I looked across at Marie, who seemed a different woman.

“So nothing’s changed then,” she said.

“On the contrary. Everything’s changed.”

I should have expressed myself more clearly and explained that I still wanted to see Esther, that I knew where she was. When the time was right, I would take a train, taxi, plane, or whatever just to be by her side. This would, of course, mean losing the woman who was there by my side at that moment, steadfastly doing all she could to prove how important I was to her.

I was, of course, being a coward. I was ashamed of myself, but that was what life was like, and—in a way I couldn’t really explain—I loved Marie too.

The other reason I didn’t say more was because I had always believed in signs, and when I recalled the moments of silence I had shared with my wife, I knew that—with or without voices, with or without explanations—the time to find Esther had still not yet arrived. I needed to concentrate more on those shared silences than on any of our conversations, because that would give me the freedom I needed to understand the time when things had gone right between us and the moment when they had started to go wrong.

Marie was there, looking at me. Could I go on being disloyal to someone who was doing so much for me? I started to feel uncomfortable, but I couldn’t tell her everything, unless…unless I could find an indirect way of saying what I was feeling.

“Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterward, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: Which of the two will wash his face?”

“That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face, of course.”

“No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me and thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you.”

I would like to have added: that’s what happened to Esther, and I’ve only just realized it, remembering now how the look in her eyes changed. I’d always absorbed her life and her energy, and that made me feel happy and confident, able to go forward. She, on the other
hand, had looked at me and felt ugly, diminished, because, as the years passed, my career—the career that she had done so much to make a reality—had relegated our relationship to second place.

If I was to see her again, my face needed to be as clean as hers. Before I could find her, I must first find myself.

Ahora sólo falta localizarle y frenarle.

———————————

His real name seems to be “Gorka Moreno”, and he himself confessed being Matias… (RDC, anyone?)

Now, all we need is to locate him and stop him…

I put up my hand again, and meanwhile asked myself if I agreed with what the man had
just said.

Yes, I did. I had imagined similar scenarios involving Esther and the soldiers she met in war zones, but I had never dared say as much, not even to myself.

Mikhail looked in my direction and nodded.

I don’t know how I managed to get to my feet and look at that audience, who were still visibly shocked by the story of the man who had felt aroused by the thought of his wife having sex with another man. No one seemed to be listening, and that helped me make a start.

“I apologize for not being as direct as the two previous speakers, but I nevertheless have something to say. I went to a train station today and learned that the distance between railway tracks is always 143.5 centimeters, or 4 feet 8½ inches.

Why this absurd measurement (the protagonist had aked himself that before in the cause of the book: Why not 1,5 mtrs of 5 feet? R.) ?

I asked my girlfriend to find out and this is what she discovered:

When they built the first train carriages, they used the same tools as they had for building horse-drawn carriages. And why that distance between the wheels on carriages? Because that was the width of the old roads along which the carriages had to travel. And who decided that roads should be that width? Well, suddenly, we are plunged back into the distant past.

It was the Romans, the first great road builders, who decided to make their roads that width. And why?

Because their war chariots were pulled by two horses, and when placed side by side, the horses they used at the time took up 143.5 centimeters.

So the distance between the tracks I saw today, used by our state-of-the-art high-speed trains, was determined by the Romans.

When people went to the United States and started building railways there, it didn’t occur to them to change the width and so it stayed as it was. This even affected the building of space shuttles. American engineers thought the fuel tanks should be wider, but the tanks were built in Utah and had to be transported by train to the Space Center in Florida, and the tunnels couldn’t take anything wider. And so they had to accept the measurement that the Romans had decided was the ideal.

But what has all this to do with marriage?”

I paused. Some people were not in the slightest bit interested in railway tracks and had
started talking among themselves. Others were listening attentively, among them Marie
and Mikhail.

“It has everything to do with marriage and with the two stories we have just heard.

At some point in history, someone turned up and said: When two people get married, they must stay frozen like that for the rest of their lives. You will move along side by side like two tracks, keeping always that same distance apart.

Even if sometimes one of you needs to be a little farther away or a little closer, that is against the rules. The rules say: Be sensible, think of the future, think of your children. You can’t change, you must be like two railway tracks that remain the same distance apart all the way from their point of departure to their destination. The rules don’t allow for love to change, or to grow at the start and diminish halfway through — it’s too dangerous.

And so, after the enthusiasm of the first few years, they maintain the same distance, the same solidity, the same functional nature.

Your purpose is to allow the train bearing the survival of the species to head off into the future: your children will only be happy if you stay just as you were — 143.5 centimeters apart. If you’re not happy with something that never changes, think of them, think of the children you brought into the world.”

“Think of your neighbors. Show them that you’re happy, eat roast beef on Sundays, watch television, help the community. Think of society. Dress in such a way that everyone knows you’re in perfect harmony.

Never glance to the side, someone might be watching you, and that could bring temptation; it could mean divorce, crisis, depression.”

“Smile in all the photos. Put the photos in the living room, so that everyone can see them. Cut the grass, practice a sport — oh, yes, you must practice a sport in order to stay frozen in time… When sport isn’t enough, have plastic surgery.

But never forget, these rules were established long ago and must be respected. Who established these rules? That doesn’t matter. Don’t question them, because they will always apply, even if you don’t agree with them.”

I sat down. There was a mixture of enthusiastic applause and indifference, and I wondered if I had gone too far. Marie was looking at me with a mixture of admiration and surprise.

The woman on stage sounded the cymbal.

I told Marie to stay where she was, while I went outside to smoke a cigarette:

“They’ll perform a dance now in the name of love, in the name of the Lady.”

“You can smoke in here, can’t you?”

“Yes, but I need to be alone.”

Bjorn was found in a railroadstation in Frankfurt/Germany

he arrived back home around 1015PM this evening

details are confusing and of course private…

thanx for your thoughts and prayers

Thanks, Rattler

======================================================

A friend of mine asked me to relay this Missing Person Search Request just in case someone can help, the nephew of his wife disappeared:

- 20 yrs old, going to school, near DIEST, Belgium
- last seen Tuesday APR 21, when he left home for a bookstore
- no criminal record, family history normal
- had an accident a few weeks ago, healthy apart from that

His Facebook profile:

Picture (he is the guy on the right side):

Bjoern is the guy on the right side

Any help or information much appreciated

Rattler

Click on the next link/Sique el enlace bajo de estas lineas para ver el resto de la entrada, y a ver que me quieres comentar?:

Estos son todas las fotos que he puesto alli donde nos conocimos, no en el mismo orden, he empiezado con mis animales, por que si:

Locke ("flequillo" en español)

No animal : Yo JUN 2007

Pocholo y Esquit

Mis gatos: Sara y Sombrero

Mi cabra: Dionysa

Uno de mis erizos: Kasimir

Matt hace 4 años (no ha cambiado mucho)

Matt 2003

Esto es como yo veo el mundo, mi tipo de musica y de letra, aparte de un “Badass” sol de guitara…:

Santi Latorre: Y Que? (…hay dias que prefiero estudiar filosofia… )

Y, las cosas que me dan asco:

Una abrazo, Matias

We now have a fairly clear idea of what he looks like, and he seems to zoom around the world, any feedback to his whereabouts most appreciated!

———
… y le gusta bailar!

Ahora tenemos und idea bastante concreta acerca el aspecto de Matias, parece el esta en todos partes del mundo a la vez, si le encontrais manda nos un mensaje!