Going Home

I had succeeded in repairing my engine. The little prince told me it was the anniversary of his arrival on Earth, and that his star would be right above the place where he had first landed a year ago.

That evening I found him sitting on top of an old stone wall, talking to someone I could not see. I heard him say: "You have good poison? You are sure it will not make me suffer too long?"

I stopped, my heart torn. Then I saw it — one of those yellow snakes that take thirty seconds to bring your life to an end — at the foot of the wall. I ran. The snake disappeared among the stones.

I caught the little prince in my arms. His face was white as snow.

"What does this mean?" I demanded. "Why are you talking with snakes?"

He looked at me very gravely and put his arms around my neck. I felt his heart beating like the heart of a dying bird.

"I am glad that you have found what was wrong with your engine," he said. "Now you can go back home."

"How do you know about that?"

He made no answer to my question. He said only: "I, too, am going back home today..."

Then, sadly: "It is much farther. It is much more difficult."

I realised clearly that something extraordinary was happening.

"Little man," I said, "you are afraid."

He was afraid, there was no doubt about that. But he laughed lightly. "I shall be much more afraid this evening."

He grew serious and said: "Tonight it will be a year. My star will be right above the place where I came down to Earth, exactly a year ago."

"The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen," he told me. "It is just as it is with the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are in bloom with flowers."

"And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is. But it is better, like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to look at all the stars in the sky. They will all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present."

He laughed again. "All men have the stars, but they are not the same for different people. For some who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You — you alone — will have the stars as no one else has them. In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night."

Then he said quietly: "Tonight — you know — do not come."

"I shall not leave you," I said.

"I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see it. It is not worth the trouble."

"I shall not leave you."

That night I did not see him set out. He moved away without making a sound. When I caught up with him he was walking with a quick and resolute step. He said to me merely: "Ah! You are there."

And he took me by the hand. But he was still troubled: "It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look as if I were dead, and that will not be true."

There was nothing but a flash of yellow close to his ankle. He remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even any sound, because of the sand.