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. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey 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 like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether
the drawing frightened them.
But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one 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
the 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,
arithmetic 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 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 a glance I can
distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such
knowledge is valuable.
In the course of this 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, close at hand. And that hasn''t much improved my
opinion of them.
Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I
tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I
have always kept. I would try to find out, 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.
这位朋友并没有丝毫责怪我的意思，反而天真可爱地笑了，他说：“你看，你画的不是一只小绵羊，而是一头公羊，它还长着犄角呢。”
于是我又重新画了一张。
但是，这副画同前几副一样，又被他否定了。
“这一只羊太老了。我想要一只能活得长久一点的小绵羊。”
这次我不耐烦了。因为我急于要拆卸发动机，于是就草草画了这张画，随口对他解释说：
“这是一只箱子，你要的羊就在里面。”
这时，我十分惊讶地看到，我的这位小朋友终于露出了笑脸。他说：
“这正是我想要的小绵羊，你说，喂养这只羊需要很多草吗？”
“为什么问这个呢？”
“因为我住的地方非常小……”
“我给你画的是一只很小的小羊，地方再小也够它住的。”
他把脑袋靠近这张画。
“并不像你说的那么小……瞧！它睡着了……”
就这样，我认识了小王子。
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 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.
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 object?"
"That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my
airplane."
And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly. He cried out,
then:
"What! You dropped down from the sky?"
"Ye." 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 gleam of light in 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:
"It is true that on that you can''t have come from very far
away..."
And he sank into a reverie, 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-confidence 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 your sheep?"
After a reflective silence he answered:
"The thing that is so good about the box you have given me is that
at night he can use it as his house."
"That is so. And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so
that you can tie him during the day, and a post to tie him
to."
But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer:
"Tie him?What a queer idea!"
"But if you don''t tie him," I said, "he will wander off somewhere,
and get lost."
My friend broke into another peal of laughter:
"But where do you think he would go?"
"Anywhere. Straight ahead of him."
Then the little prince said, earnestly:
"That doesn''t matter. Where I live, everything is so small!"
And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
"Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far..."
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