Page 11 - The Little Prince Antoine
P. 11

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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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