The Little Prince (Chapters 6-9)

Reading from The Little Prince by French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944).
This fantastic tale contains timeless messages for all ages. Let yourself be carried away by the adventures of the aviator and his young friend full of wisdom and sweetness. If you enjoyed this recording, let me know with a small donation or a message, and I will work on producing the following chapters. "If you please -- draw me a sheep!"
Music by Kai Engel, Doctor Turtle and NaturesEye

Transcript

Chapter 6 Oh,

Little prince,

Bit by bit,

I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life.

For a long time,

You had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset.

I learned that new detail on the morning of the fourth day,

When you said to me,

I am very fond of sunsets.

Come,

Let us go look at a sunset now.

But we must wait,

I said.

Wait?

For what?

For the sunset?

We must wait until it is time.

At first,

You seemed to be very much surprised,

And then you laughed to yourself.

You said to me,

I keep thinking I'm still home.

Just so everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States,

The sun is setting over France.

If you could fly to France in one minute,

You could go straight into the sunset right from noon.

Unfortunately,

France is too far away for that.

But on your tiny planet,

My little prince,

All you need to do is move your chair a few steps.

You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like.

One day,

You said to me,

I saw the sunset 44 times.

And a little later you added,

You know,

One loves the sunset when one is so sad.

Were you sad then?

I asked,

On the day of the 44 sunsets.

But the little prince made no reply.

Chapter seven.

On the fifth day,

Again as always,

It was thanks to the sheep.

The secret of the little prince's life was revealed to me abruptly without anything to lead up to it.

And as if the question had been born of long and silent meditation on this problem,

He asked,

A sheep,

If it eats little bushes,

Does it eat flowers too?

A sheep,

I answered,

Eats anything it finds in its reach.

Even flowers that have thorns?

Yes,

Even flowers that have thorns.

Then the thorns,

What use are they?

I did not know.

At that moment,

I was very busy trying to unscrew a bolt that had got stuck in my engine.

I was very much worried,

For it was becoming clear to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremely serious.

And I had so little drinking water left that I had to fear for the worst.

The thorns,

What's the point of them?

The little prince never let go of a question once he asked it.

As for me,

I was upset over that bolt.

And I answered with the first thing that came into my head.

The thorns are of no use at all.

Flowers have thorns just for spite.

Oh,

There was a moment of complete silence.

Then the little prince flashed back at me with a kind of resentfulness.

I don't believe you.

Flowers are weak creatures.

They are naive.

They reassure themselves as best they can.

They believe they are so menacing with their thorns.

I did not answer.

At that instant,

I was saying to myself,

If this bolt still won't turn,

I'm going to knock it out with a hammer.

Again,

The little prince disturbed my thoughts.

And you actually believe that the flowers- No,

No,

No,

No,

I don't believe anything.

I answered you with the first thing that came into my mind.

Don't you see?

I'm very busy with matters of consequence.

He stared at me thunderstalk.

Matters of consequence.

He looked at me there with my hammer in my hand,

My fingers black with the engine grease,

Bending down over an object which seemed to him extremely ugly.

You talk just like the grownups.

That made me a little ashamed.

But he went on,

Relentlessly.

You mix everything up together.

You confuse everything.

He was really very angry.

He tossed his golden curls in the breeze.

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman.

He has never smelled a flower.

He has never looked at a star.

He has never loved anyone.

He has never done anything in his life but add up the figures.

And all day,

He says over and over,

Just like you,

I am busy with matters of consequence.

And that makes him swell up with pride.

But he is not a man.

He is a mushroom.

A what?

A mushroom.

The little prince was now pale with rage.

The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years.

For millions of years,

The sheep have been eating them just the same.

And it is not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them.

Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important?

Is this not of more consequence than a big red-faced gentleman's sums?

And if I know,

I myself,

One flower which is unique in the world,

Which grows nowhere but on my planet,

But which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning,

Without even noticing what he is doing.

Oh,

You think that is not important?

His face turned from white to red,

As he continued,

If someone loves a flower,

Of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars,

It is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars.

He can say to himself,

Somewhere my flower is there.

But if the sheep eats the flower,

In one moment,

All his stars will be darkened.

And you think that is not important?

He could not say anything more.

His words were choked by sobbing.

The night had fallen.

I had let my tools drop from my hands.

I couldn't care less in that moment,

About my hammer,

My bolt,

Thirst or death.

On one star,

One planet,

My planet the earth,

There was a little prince to be consoled.

I took him in my arms and rocked him.

I said to him,

The flower that you love is not in danger.

I will draw you a muzzle for your sheep.

I will draw you a railing to put around your flower.

I will,

I did not know what to say to him.

I felt awkward and blundering.

I didn't know how to reach him,

How to connect with him.

It is such a mysterious place,

The land of the tears.

Chapter 8 I soon got to know his flower a little better.

On the little prince's planet,

The flowers had always been very simple.

They had only one ring of petals.

They took up no room at all.

They were a trouble to nobody.

One morning,

They would appear in the grass,

And by night,

They would have faded peacefully away.

But one day,

From a seed blown from the one you wear,

A new flower had come up.

And the little prince had watched very closely over the small sprout which was not like any other small sprouts on his planet.

It might,

You see,

Have been a new kind of baobab.

The shrub soon stopped growing and began to get ready to produce a flower.

The little prince,

Who was present at the first appearance of a huge bud,

Felt at once that some sort of miraculous apparition must emerge from it.

But the flower was not completely satisfied with the preparation of her beautiful appearance in the shelter of her green chamber.

She was choosing her colors with the greatest care.

She was adjusting her petals one by one.

She did not want to come into the world all ruffled like a poppy.

It was only in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear.

Oh yes,

She was very coquette.

And her mysterious adornment lasted for days and days.

Then,

One morning,

Exactly at sunrise,

She suddenly revealed herself.

And,

After working with all the painstaking precision,

She yawned and said,

I'm still waking up.

Please bear with me.

My petals are still all disarranged.

But the little prince could not contain his admiration.

Oh,

You are so beautiful.

Am I not?

The flower responded softly.

And I was born at the same time as the sun.

The little prince could easily gather from this that she was not too modest.

But how moving and exciting she was.

I believe it is time for breakfast,

She added shortly after.

Would you be so kind to think of my needs?

And the little prince completely abashed when to look for a sprinkling can of fresh water.

So he tended the flower.

So too,

She began very quickly to torment him with her vanity,

Which was,

Truth be told,

A little difficult to deal with.

One day,

For instance,

When she was speaking of her four thorns,

She said to the little prince,

Let the tigers come with their claws.

There are no tigers on my planet,

The little prince objected.

And,

In any case,

Tigers do not eat weeds.

I'm not a weed,

The flower replied softly.

Please forgive me.

I am not at all afraid of tigers,

She went on.

But I can't stand giraffes.

I suppose you wouldn't have a protective screen for me.

Can't stand giraffes.

This is bad luck for a plant,

Remarked the little prince and added to himself.

This flower is a very complex creature.

At night,

You have to put me under a glass globe.

It is very cold here where you live.

Where I came from,

But she interrupted herself at that point.

She had come in the form of a seed.

She could not have known anything of any other worlds.

Embarrassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naive lie.

She coughed two or three times in order to put the little prince in the wrong.

The screen,

I was just going to get it for you,

But you started speaking with me.

Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same.

So the little prince,

In spite of all the goodwill that was in separable from his love,

Had soon come to doubt her.

He had taken seriously words which were without importance and it made him very unhappy.

I should not have listened to her.

He confined it to me one day.

One never out to listen to the flowers.

One should simply look at them and take in their fragrance.

Mine perfumed my whole planet,

But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.

This tale of the claws which disturbed me so much should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.

And he continued his confidences.

The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything.

I should have judged by deeds and not by words.

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me.

I should have never run away from her.

I should only have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems.

Flowers are so inconsistent,

But I was too young to know how to love her.

Chapter 9 I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.

On the morning of his departure,

He put his planet in perfect order.

He carefully cleaned out his active volcanoes.

He possessed two active volcanoes and they were very convenient for heating up his breakfast in the morning.

He also had one volcano that was extinct,

But as he said,

One never knows,

So he cleaned out the extinct volcano too.

If they are well cleaned out,

Volcanoes burn slowly and steadily without any eruptions.

Volcanic eruptions are like fires in a chimney.

On our planet,

We are obviously much too small to clean out our volcanoes.

That is why they bring no end of trouble upon us.

The little prince also pulled up with a certain sense of nostalgia the last little shoots of the baobabs.

He believed that he would never want to return.

But on this last morning,

All these familiar tasks seemed very precious to him,

And when he watered the flower for the last time and prepared to place her under the shelter of her glass globe,

He realized that he was very close to tears.

Goodbye,

He said to the flower.

But she did not answer.

Goodbye,

He said again.

The flower coughed,

But it was not because she had a cold.

I have been so silly,

She said to him at last.

I ask for your forgiveness.

Try to be happy.

He was surprised by the lack of criticism.

He stood there,

All bewildered,

The glass globe held up in midair.

He did not understand this quiet sweetness.

Of course I love you.

It is my fault that you have not known it all the time.

That is of no importance,

But you,

You have been just as foolish as I.

Try to be happy.

Leave that glass globe alone.

I do not want it anymore.

But the wind.

My cold isn't all that bad.

The cool night air will do me good.

I am a flower.

But the animals.

Well,

I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

It seems that they are very beautiful.

And if not the butterflies and the caterpillars,

Who will visit me?

You will be far away.

As for the large animals,

I am not at all afraid of any of them.

I have my claws.

And naively,

She showed her four thorns.

Then she added,

Don't you linger like this.

You have decided to go away.

Now,

Go.

For she did not want him to see her crying.

She was such a proud flower.

You

Reviews

Another enjoyable night time story! My son and I are really enjoying your reading of The Little Prince. Can’t wait for the next installment!!!