I jumped to my feet,completely thunderstruck. I blinked my eyes hard. I looked carefully
all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary small person, who stood there examing me
with great seriousness. Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to
make of him. But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model.
That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter's career
when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the
outside and boas from the inside.
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in
astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited
region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands,
nor to be fainting from fatigue, or hunger, or thirst, or fear. Nothing about him gave
any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any
human habitation.When at last I was able to speak, I said to him:
"But-what are you doing here?"
And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great
consequence:
"If you please-draw me a sheep..."
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to
me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my
pockey a sheetof paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been
concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little chap
(a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw.He answered me:
"That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep..."
But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so
aften. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear
the little fellow greet iat with,
"No, no,no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a
very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. where I liven everything is
very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep."
So then I made a drawing.
He looked at it carefully, then he said:
"No, This sheep is already very sickly, Make me another."
So I make another drawing.
My friend smiled gently and indulgently.
"You see yourself," he said,"that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns."
So then I did my drawing over once more.
But it was rejucted too, just like the others.
"This one is too old. I want s sheep that will live a long time."
By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my
engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.
And I threw out an explanation with it.
"This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside."
I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:
"That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a
great deal of grass?"
"Why?"
"Because where I live everything is very small..."
"There will surely be enough grass for him," I said. "It is a very small sheep that I
havegiven you."
He bent his head over the drawing:
"Not so small that-Look! He has gone to sleep..."
And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.