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THE LITTLE PRINCE

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

CHAPTER 2

So I lived by myself, with no one to talk to, till six years ago, my plane came down in the Sahara Desert with a broken engine. Without a mechanic or any passengers, I ventured to perform the difficult repairs on my own. It was a matter of life and death – there wasn’t enough drinking water to last a week.

Miles away from civilization, I spent my first night on the sand, more lost than a castaway in the middle of a vast ocean. So imagine my astonishment when a strange voice woke me the next morning.

It said: ‘Please … could you draw me a sheep!’

‘What!’

‘Draw me a sheep!’

Utterly startled, I sprang up. Blinking hard, I surveyed the area around myself cautiously. There stood an incredibly small person studying me intently. This is the best portrait I could manage from memory. But the actual person was far more fascinating.

The fault is not mine. Discouraged from becoming a painter when I was six years old, I only know how to draw boas from the inside and from the outside.

Now this sudden vision made my eyes fall out of my head in disbelief. As you are aware, I had crash-landed in the desert many miles from any habitation. Yet this fellow seemed neither weary nor astray; he wasn’t even fainting from hunger or thirst or fear. He did not look like a child lost in the middle of the desert, far away from any living thing. When I finally found I could speak, I asked him, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Please … could you draw me a sheep?’ he repeated slowly, with care, as if this was a matter of great importance.