I soon learned to know that flower better. On the little prince’s planet, there had aways been very simple flowers, But this one had grown from a seed brought from who knows where,and the little prince had kept a close watch over a sprout that was not like any of the others. It might have been a new kind of baobab.But the sprout soon stopped growing and began to show signs of blossoming. The little prince, who had watched the development of an enormous bud, realized that some sort of miraculous apparition would emerge from it.
And then one morning, precisely at sunrise,she showed herself.
“Ah!I’m hardly awake… Forgive me… I’m still all untidy…”
“How lovely you are!”
“Aren’t I? And I was born the same time as the sun…I believe it is breakfast time.Would you be so kind as to tend to me?”
And the little prince,utterly abashed,having gone to look for a watering can,served the flower.
He had soon begun tormenting him with her rather touchy vanity. One day,for instance,alluding to her four thorns,she remarked to the little prince:
“I’m ready for tigers, with all their claws.”
“There are no tigers on my planet,and besides,tigers don’t eat weeds.”
“I am not a weed.”
“Oh.Forgive me…”
“I am not at all afraid of tigers, but I have a horror of drafts. You wouldn’t happen to have a screen.”
“A horror of drafts… that’s not a good sign for a plant.How complicated this flower is…”
“After dark you will put me under glass. How cold it is where you lives… quite uncomfortable. Where I come from I…”
But she suddenly broke off. She had come here as a seed. She couldn’t have known anything of other worlds. Humiliated at having let herself be caught on the verge of so naive a lie, she coughed two or three times in order to put the little prince in the wrong.
“What about the screen?”
“Ah…I was going to look for one, but you were speaking to me.”
Then she made herself cough again, in order to inflict a twinge of remorse on him all the same.
So the little prince, despite all the goodwill of his love, had soon come to mistrust her. He had taken seriously certain inconsequential remarks and had grown very unhappy.
On the morning of his departure, he put his planet in order. And when he watered the flower one last time, and put her under glass, he felt like crying.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
“I’ve been silly, I…I ask your forgiveness, Try to be happy.”
He was surprised that there were no reproaches. He stood there, quite bewildered, holding the glass bell in midair.
“Of course I love you, It was my fault you never knew, It doesn’t matter. But you were just as silly as I was. Try to be happy… Put that glass thing down, I don’t want it anymore.”
“But the wind…”
“My cold isn’t that bad… The night air will do me good, I’m a flower.”
“But the animals…”
“I need to put up with two or three caterpillars if I want to get to know the butterflies. Apparently they’re very beautiful. Otherwise who will visit me? You’ll be far away. As for the big animals，I’m not afraid of them. I have my own claws.”
And she naively showed her four thorns. Then she added,
“Don’t hang around like this, it’s irritating. You made up your mind to leave, Now go.”
She didn’t want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower….