Chapter 24
It was now the eighth day since I had had my accident in the desert, and I had listened to the story of the merchant as I was drinking the last drop of my water supply.
“Ah,” I said to the little prince, “these memories of yours are very charming; but I have not yet succeeded in repairing my plane; I have nothing more to drink; and I, too, should be very happy if I could walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water!”
“My friend the fox−−” the little prince said to me.
“My dear little man, this is no longer a matter that has anything to do with the fox!”
“Why not?”
“Because I am about to die of thirst…”
He did not follow my reasoning, and he answered me:
“It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have had a fox as a friend…”
“He has no way of guessing the danger,” I said to myself. “He has never been either hungry or thirsty. A little sunshine is all he needs…”
But he looked at me steadily, and replied to my thought:
“I am thirsty, too. Let us look for a well…”
I made a gesture of weariness. It is absurd to look for a well, at random, in the immensity of the desert. But nevertheless we started walking.
When we had trudged along for several hours, in silence, the darkness fell, and the stars began to come out. Thirst had made me a little feverish, and I looked at them as if I were in a dream. The little prince’s last words came reeling back into my memory:
“Then you are thirsty, too?” I demanded.
But he did not reply to my question. He merely said to me:
“Water may also be good for the heart…”
I did not understand this answer, but I said nothing. I knew very well that it was impossible to cross−examine him.
He was tired. He sat down. I sat down beside him. And, after a little silence, he spoke again:
“The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.”
I replied, “Yes, that is so.” And, without saying anything more, I looked across the ridges of sand that were stretched out before us in the moonlight.
“The desert is beautiful,” the little prince added.
And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”
I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart…
“Yes,” I said to the little prince. “The house, the stars, the desert−− what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!”
“I am glad,” he said, “that you agree with my fox.”
As the little prince dropped off to sleep, I took him in my arms and set out walking once more. I felt deeply moved, and stirred. It seemed to me that I was carrying a very fragile treasure. It seemed to me, even, that there was nothing more fragile on all Earth. In the moonlight I looked at his pale forehead, his closed eyes, his locks of hair that trembled in the wind, and I said to myself: “What I see here is nothing but a shell. What is most important is invisible…”
As his lips opened slightly with the suspicious of a half−smile, I said to myself, again: “What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower−− the image of a rose that shines through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep…” And I felt him to be more fragile still. I felt the need of protecting him, as if he himself were a flame that might be extinguished by a little puff of wind…
And, as I walked on so, I found the well, at daybreak.
Appendix
这已经是我遇难的第 8 天了，我听着小王子的故事，喝光了最后一滴水。
我对小王子说，你的这些记忆都是珍贵美好的。可惜我没能修好我的飞机，我就快要死了。
小王子说，很高兴能够和一个快死的人交朋友，就像我以前的朋友小狐狸一样。
我对小王子说，你似乎并不理解我的处境和危险，毕竟你不会饥饿和口渴，你只需要一束阳光就足够了。
小王子却说，他也会口渴。接着又说，也许水对心也是有好处的。
……
小王子说，一起去找这个沙漠里的水井吧。
我虽然不赞同，但还是一起出发了。
小王子说，星星是美好的，因为在星星上面，有一朵看不见的花。
是的。
小王子说，沙漠也是很漂亮的。
是的。
我曾经喜欢沙漠，只有沙子和沙丘，没有别的噪音，一个人感受寂静。
我回复小王子说，是的，星星、沙漠、房子都是漂亮的，而且他们真正美好的地方是看不见的，只用眼镜看不见。
小王子说，很高兴你能够同意小狐狸的话。
很快到了晚上，小王子睡着了。
我以前居住在一栋古老的房子里，也许房子里藏着宝藏，只是没有人找到过，也没有人知道宝藏到底是什么。真正重要的东西是看不见的。
我抱着小王子，继续走路。
感觉小王子才是宝藏……
当然，走了很久很久，天亮的时候，那口井出现了。