Little
Prince Table of Contents
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 was broken in my engine. And as I had with
me neither a mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt
the difficult repairs all alone. It was a question of life or death
for me: I had scarcely 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: "If you 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
small person, who stood there examining me with great seriousness.
Here you may see the best potrait 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 starting
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, 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:
"If
you 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 me: "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 sickly. Make me another." So I made
another drawing. My friend smiled gently and indulgenty. "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 off this drawing. And
I threw 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
have to have a great deal 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, Look! He has
gone to sleep..."
And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.
Go
to Chapter 3
|
