The Sunsets

For a long time, the little prince's only pleasure had been watching sunsets.

"I am very fond of sunsets," he told me one morning. "Come, let us go look at a sunset now."

"But we must wait," I said. "We must wait until it is time."

He seemed surprised. Then he laughed at himself and said: "I always think I am at home!"

Everyone knows that when it is noon in one part of the world, the sun is setting somewhere else. But on the little prince's tiny planet, all he had to do was move his chair a few steps. He could watch the day end and the evening fall whenever he liked.

"One day," he told me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"

And a little later he added: "You know — one loves the sunset when one is very sad."

"Were you so sad, then," I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"

But the little prince made no reply.