Маленький принц / The Little Prince

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:

“Tie him! What a queer idea!”

“But if you don’t tie him,” I said, “he will wander off[4 - to wander off – забрести] somewhere, and get lost[5 - to get lost – потеряться].”

My friend laughed loudly:

“But where do you think he can go?”

“Anywhere. Straight ahead of him.”

Then the little prince said, earnestly:

“That doesn’t matter.

And, with sadness, he added:

“Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far.”

4

Thus I learned an important fact: the little prince’s planet was no larger than a house!

But that did not really surprise me much. I knew very well that in addition to the great planets to which we gave names—such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus—there are also hundreds of others. Some of them are very small. It’s hard to see them even through the telescope.

I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid was seen through the telescope only once, by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. He had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody believed what he said.

Grown-ups are like that.

Fortunately, however, in 1920 the astronomer gave his presentation again, dressed in European costume. And this time everybody accepted his report.

Why do I tell you these details about the asteroid? Because I want to talk about the grown-ups. When you tell them that you have a new friend, they never ask you any important questions. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he like? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures they think they learn anything about him.

If you say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they won’t have any idea of that house at all. You must say: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.