A Random
Chapter from
THE
LITTLE PRINCE
I
soon learned to know that flower better. On the little prince's
planet, there had always
been very simple flowers, decorated with a single row of petals
so that they took up no room at all and got into no one's way.
They would appear one morning in the grass, and would fade by
nightfall. (TRANSLATION: WOMEN)
But
this one had come from a seed brought from who knows where?
and
the little prince had kept a close watch
over
a
sprout
that was not like any of the others.
It
might have been a new kind of baobab.
(symbol
of something that would threaten his planet)
But
the sprout soon stopped growing and began to show signs of blossoming.
The little prince,
who
had watched the development of a tremendous bud,
realized
that some sort of miraculous apparition would emerge from it,
but the flower continued her beauty preparations in the shelter
of her green chamber, selecting her colors with the greatest care
and dressing quite deliberately, adjusting her petals one by one.
She had no desire to emerge all rumpled like the poppies. . She
wished to appear only in the full radiance of her beauty. Oh,
yes, she was quite vain! And her mysterious adornment had lasted
days and days. And then one morning, precisely at sunrise, she
showed herself.
And
after having labored so painstakingly she yawned and said, "Ah,
I'm hardly awake. ..Forgive me...I'm stll all untidy..."
But
the little prince couldn't contain his admiration.
"How
lovely you are!"
"Aren't
I?" the flower answered sweetly. "And I was born the
same time as the sun..."
The
little prince realized that she wasn't any too modest, but she
was so dazzling!
"I
believe it is breakfast time," she had soon added. "Would
you be so kind as to tend to me?"
And
the little prince, utterly abashed, having gone to look for a
water can,
served
the flower.
She
had soon begun tormenting him with her rather touchy vanity. One
day, for instance, alluding to her four thorns, she remarked to
the little prince
"I'm ready
for tigers, with all their claws"
"There
are no tigers on my planet," the little prince had objected.
And
besides, tigers don't eat weeds."
"I
am not a weed,
the
flower sweetly replied,"
"Forgive
me..."
"I
am not at all afraid of tigers, but I have a horror
of drafts.
You
wouldn't happen
to
have a shroud?"
"A
horror of drafts...that's not a good sign, for a plant!"
the little prince had observed.
"How
complicated this flower is..."
So,
the little prince, despite all the goodwill of his love, had soon
come to mistrust her. He had taken seriously certain inconsequential
remarks and had grown very unhappy.
"I
shouldn't have listened to her, " he confided to me one day.
"You must never listen to flowers. You must look at them
and smell them. Mine perfumed my planet, and lit up my life, but
I didn't how how to
ENJOY
THAT
That
business with the tiger claws,
intead
of annoying me,
ought
to have moved me..."
And
he confided further, "In those days, I didn't understand
anything.
I
should have judged her according to her
ACTIONS
not
her words.
She
perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have
RUN
AWAY
I
should have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions.
Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how
to love her."
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