Once every minute I have to light my lamp and put it out!"
"That is very funny!
A day lasts only one minute, here where you live!"
"It is not funny at all!" said the lamplighter.
"While we have been talking together a month has gone by."
"A month?"
"Yes, a month.
Thirty minutes.
Thirty days.
Good evening."
And he lighted his lamp again.
As the little prince watched him, he felt that he loved this lamplighter who was so faithful to his orders.
He remembered the sunsets which he himself had gone to seek, in other days, merely by pulling up his chair; and he wanted to help his friend.
"You know," he said,
"I can tell you a way you can rest whenever you want to..."
"I always want to rest," said the lamplighter.
For it is possible for a man to be faithful and lazy at the same time.
The little prince went on with his explanation: "Your planet is so small that three strides will take you all the way around it.
To be always in the sunshine, you need only walk along rather slowly.
When you want to rest, you will walk — and the day will last as long as you like."
"That doesn't do me much good," said the lamplighter.
"The one thing I love in life is to sleep."
"Then you're unlucky," said the little prince.
"I am unlucky," said the lamplighter.
"Good morning."
And he put out his lamp.
"That man," said the little prince to himself, as he continued farther on his journey, "that man would be scorned by all the others: by the king, by the conceited man, by the tippler, by the businessman.
Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous.
Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself."
He breathed a sigh of regret, and said to himself, again:
"That man is the only one of them all whom I could have made my friend.
But his planet is indeed too small.
There is no room on it for two people..."
What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all to leave this planet, because it was blest every day with 1440 sunsets!
XV
Monsieur.jpg
The sixth planet was ten times larger than the last one.
It was inhabited by an old gentleman who wrote voluminous books.
"Oh, look!
Here is an explorer!" he exclaimed to himself when he saw the little prince coming.
The little prince sat down on the table and panted a little.
He had already traveled so much and so far!
"Where do you come from?" the old gentleman said to him.
"What is that big book?" said the little prince.
"What are you doing?"
"I am a geographer," said the old gentleman.
"What is a geographer?" asked the little prince.
"A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers, towns, mountains, and deserts."
"That is very interesting," said the little prince.
"Here at last is a man who has a real profession!"