Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

It was good for the heart, like a present.

When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the Midnight Mass, the tenderness of smiling faces, used to make up, so, the radiance of the gifts I received.

"The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden--and they do not find in it what they are looking for."

"They do not find it," I replied.

"And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water."

"Yes, that is true," I said.

And the little prince added: "But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart . . ."

I had drunk the water. I breathed easily.

At sunrise the sand is the color of honey.

And that honey color was making me happy, too.

What brought me, then, this sense of grief?

"You must keep your promise," said the little prince, softly, as he sat down beside me once more.

"What promise?"

"You know--a muzzle for my sheep . . . I am responsible for this flower . . ."

I took my rough drafts of drawings out of my pocket. The little prince looked them over, and laughed as he said:

"Your baobabs--they look a little like cabbages."

"Oh!"

I had been so proud of my baobabs!

"Your fox--his ears look a little like horns; and they are too long."

And he laughed again.

"You are not fair, little prince," I said.

"I don't know how to draw anything except boa constrictors from the outside and boa constrictors from the inside."

"Oh, that will be all right," he said, "children understand."

So then I made a pencil sketch of a muzzle.

And as I gave it to him my heart was torn.

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