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DEDICATION OF THE BOOK



TO MY FRIEND LEON WERTH

I ask for pardon to the children who may read this book for dedicating it to an adult. I have an important reason for it, since he is the best friend I have ever had in the world. And I have another reason, because this grown-up understands everything, even books about children. I have a third reason: he lives in France, a countrywhere he is hungry and cold. He deserves to receive some encouragement. If all these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the book to the child from which this adult grew up. All grown-ups were children some time ago, although few of them remember their childhood.



This is why I correct the dedication of my book.TO LEON WERTH

When he was a child





THE LITTLE PRINCE

I

AN ELEPHANT INSIDE A SNAKE

Once upon a time, when I was six years old, I saw an impressive picture in a book calledTrue Stories from Nature, about the savage jungle, where enormous boas are supposed to exist. It was a picture of a sixty feet boa snake in the act of swallowing a big animal. Here is a copy of that drawing









The book said: "Boa snakes use to swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that, they are no longer able to move, and they sleep along the six months thatthey need for digestion."



Then I reflected deeply about the adventures of the jungle. And after some work, with a colored pencil I succeeded in making the first drawing of my life. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:







I was proud to show my masterpiece to adult people, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But people answered:"Frightened? Why should I be frightened by a hat?"

But my drawing did not represent a hat. It was the picture of a boa snake digesting an elephant. But since adult people were not able to understand it, I made another drawing. In order to make my picture clearer, I drew the inside of the snake, so that adult people could see it clearly, because they always need to have thingsexplained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:







Older people response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa snakes, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to study geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a brilliant career as a painter. I had been discoura-ged by thefailure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Older people never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Thus I chose another profession, and I learned to fly airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and I realized that it was true what older people said that geography wouldbe very useful for me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost flying in the night, such geographic knowledge is very valuable.

All along my life I have met many people who have been concerned with very important matters. I have lived a long time among adult people. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. However, that hasn't much improved my opinion aboutthem.

Whenever I would meet one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept at hand. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he or she, would always say:

"That is a hat."

Then I would never talk to that person about boa snakes,...