Page 11 - The Little Prince Antoine
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I
t took me ages to work out where the little prince came
from. He asked me lots of questions but never seemed to
hear mine. I gradually pieced his story together from odd
things he said. For instance, when he first caught sight of my
plane (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too
complicated for me), he asked me: “What’s that thing?”
“It’s not a thing. It flies. It’s a plane. It’s my plane.”
And I was proud to tell him that I was a pilot and I flew
planes.
Then he exclaimed: “What! You feel out of the sky!”
“Yes”, I replied modestly.
“Oh! That’s funny.”
And the little prince gave a tinkling laugh which I
found extremely annoying. I expect people to take my
troubles seriously.
Then he added: “So you came out of the sky too! What
planet are you from?”
It suddenly dawned on me that he was giving me an
important clue as to his mysterious appearance, and I said:
“You’re from another planet, aren’t you?”
But he did not reply. Still staring at my plane, he
gently nodded his head: “Of course, you can’t have come
from very far away in that thing.”
And he stood lost in thought for a while. Then, taking
my lamb out of his pocket, he examined his treasure.
You can imagine how intrigued I was by his allusion to other
planets.
So I tried to find out more: “Where do you come from,
little man? Where is ‘your place’? Where do you want to take
my lamb?”
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