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And he cast a look around him at the planet of the geographer.

It was the most magnificent and stately planet that he had ever seen.

"Your planet is very beautiful," he said.

"Has it any oceans?"

"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.

"Ah!" The little prince was disappointed.

"Has it any mountains?"

"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.

"And towns, and rivers, and deserts?"

"I couldn't tell you that, either."

"But you are a geographer!"

"Exactly," the geographer said.

"But I am not an explorer. I haven't a single explorer on my planet.

It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, and the deserts.

The geographer is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk.

But he receives the explorers in his study.

He asks them questions, and he notes down what they recall of their travels.

And if the recollections of any one among them seem interesting to him, the geographer orders an inquiry into that explorer's moral character."

"Why is that?"

"Because an explorer who told lies would bring disaster on the books of the geographer.

So would an explorer who drank too much."

"Why is that?" asked the little prince.

"Because intoxicated men see double.

Then the geographer would note down two mountains in a place where there was only one."

"I know some one," said the little prince, "who would make a bad explorer."