'No. This sheep is already very sickly. 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 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.
III
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?'
'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 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...'
IV
I had thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that 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 great planets — such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus — to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope. When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number. He might call it, for example, 'Asteroid 325'.
I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came 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 in Turkish costume, 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 pain of death, should change to European costume. 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 essential matters. They never say to 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 rosy 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
