"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me.
All the chickens are just alike, and all the men 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 ea t 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 colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have
tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me bac k the thought of you. And
I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."
　　The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
　　"Please-- tame me!" he said.
　　"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not 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. "Men 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 men 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 yo u
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 make you a present of 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 embarrassed.
　　"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 in 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
even 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 rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
　　"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that
he would be sure to remember.
　　"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
　　"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he
would be sure to remember.
　　"Men 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 ]
　　　　 - the little prince encounters a railway switchman
　　"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 are 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 ]
　　　　 - the little prince encounters a merchant
　　"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 ]
　　　　 - the narrator and the little prince, thirsty, hunt for a well in the desert
　　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 more 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 to me.
　　"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 he answered me:
　　"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 guessing 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 into my memory:
　　"Then you are thirsty, too?" I demanded.
　　But he did not reply to my question. He merely said to me:
　　"Water may 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 us 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 suspicious 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-- 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 need of protecting him, as if he himself were a flame that might be extinguished
by a little puff of wind...
　　And, as I walked on so, I found the well, at daybreak.
[ Chapter 25 ]
　　　　 - finding a well, the narrator and the little prince discuss his return to his planet
　　"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 here, and I thought I must be 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 moaned,
like an old weathervane which the wind has long since forgotten.
　　"Do you hear?" said the little prince. "We have wakened 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, so, 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!"
　　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 me. He said to me, instead:
　　"You know-- my descent to the earth... Tomorrow will be its anniversary."
　　Then, after a silence, he went on:
　　"I came down very near here."
　　And he flushed.
　　And once again, without understanding why, I had a queer sense of sorrow. 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 the your back to the place where you landed?"
　　The little prince flushed again.
　　And I added, with some hesitancy:
　　"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 lets himself be tamed...
[ Chapter 26 ]
　　　　 - the little prince converses with the snake; the little prince consoles the narrator;
the little prince returns to his planet
　　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 toward 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 metres 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 asunder; 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
bring your life to an end. 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 himself 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 answer to my question, but he added:
　　"I, too, am going back home today..."
　　Then, sadly--
　　"It is much farther... it is much more difficult..."
　　I realised 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 toward an abyss from which I could do nothing to restrain him...
　　His look was very serious, like some one lost 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..."