Chapter 27 🔊✎

And now, six years have passed. 🔊✎ I’ve never told anyone this story before. 🔊✎ The friends who found me were happy to see me alive. 🔊✎ I was sad, but I told them I was just tired. 🔊✎

Now the pain has left me. 🔊✎ Well… not completely. 🔊✎ But I’m sure he did return to his planet, because at daybreak I didn’t find his body. 🔊✎ It wasn’t a very heavy body. 🔊✎ And at night I love to listen to the stars. They’re like five hundred million little bells. 🔊✎

But the strangest thing has happened. 🔊✎ I realised that I forgot to add a strap to the muzzle I drew for the little prince! 🔊✎ He would never have been able to put it on the sheep. 🔊✎ So I keep asking myself: “What happened on his planet? Maybe the sheep has eaten the flower…” 🔊✎

Sometimes I tell myself: “Surely not! The little prince puts his flower under the glass cover every night, and he keeps a close eye on his sheep…” Then I’m happy. And all the stars laugh sweetly. 🔊✎

But sometimes I think: “You just need to be careless once, and that’s enough! 🔊✎ Some evening, he forgot the glass cover, or maybe the sheep escaped silently during the night…” And then all the little bells turn into tears!

And there’s the great mystery. 🔊✎ If you love the little prince, as I do, nothing in the universe is the same if somewhere, no one knows where, a sheep we don’t know might have eaten a rose. 🔊✎ Look at the sky. Ask yourself: has the sheep eaten the rose or hasn’t it? 🔊✎ And you’ll see how everything changes. And no grown-up will ever understand it can be so important! 🔊✎

For me, this is the saddest and the most beautiful landscape in the world. 🔊✎ It’s the same as the one on the page before, but I’ve drawn it again to show it to you properly. 🔊✎ This is where the little prince appeared on Earth and then disappeared again. 🔊✎ Look at the picture carefully so you’re sure you’ll recognise it, if you’re ever in Africa and visit the desert. 🔊✎ If you should ever pass by the place, I beg you, take your time and wait a bit under the star! 🔊✎ And if a child comes to you, if he laughs, if he has golden hair, if he never answers your questions, you’ll know who he is. 🔊✎ And then, please be kind! Don’t leave me alone with my sadness. 🔊✎ Write to me once and tell me he’s back… 🔊✎