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 suspicion 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.
XXV
"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.
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