Chapter 3
It took me a long time to learn where he came from. The little prince, who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones I asked him. It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me. The first time he saw my airplane, for instance (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too complicated for me), he asked me:
“What is that object?”
“That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane.”
And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly.
He cried out, then:
“What! You dropped down from the sky?”
“Yes,” I answered, modestly.
“Oh! That is funny!”
And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.
Then he added:
“So you, too, come from the sky! Which is your planet?”
At that moment I caught a gleam of light in the impenetrable mystery of his presence; and I demanded, abruptly:
“Do you come from another planet?”
But he did not reply. He tossed his head gently, without taking his eyes from my plane:
“It is true that on that you can’t have come from very far away…”
And he sank into a reverie, which lasted a long time. Then, taking my sheep out of his pocket, he buried himself in the contemplation of his treasure.
You can imagine how my curiosity was aroused by this half−confidence about the “other planets.” I made a great effort, therefore, to find out more on this subject.
“My little man, where do you come from? What is this ‘where I live,’ of which you speak? Where do you want to take your sheep?”
After a reflective silence he answered:
“The thing that is so good about the box you have given me is that at night he can use it as his house.”
“That is so. And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so that you can tie him during the day, and a post to tie him to.”
But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer:
“Tie him! What a queer idea!”
“But if you don’t tie him,” I said, “he will wander off somewhere, and get lost.”
My friend broke into another peal of laughter:
“But where do you think he would go?”
“Anywhere. Straight ahead of him.”
Then the little prince said, earnestly:
“That doesn’t matter. Where I live, everything is so small!”
And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
“Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far…”
Appendix
我对他的身世感到好奇，直到他问我，“你是从天上来的！你是哪个星球的？”
就在那一刻，对于他神秘的身世我感觉灵光一现，紧接着问道：
“你来自其他星球吗？”
他没有回答，轻轻摇了摇头，目光停留在我的飞机上，说：
“确实，你不可能从很远的地方来。”
我在语言上穷追猛打，问他，“你来自哪儿呢，住在什么地方，说什么语言？”
他回答说，“到晚上的时候，我可以把你给我的箱子作为房子。我居住的地方，所有东西都很小，并且，没有人可以离开我很远。”