The Little Prince - страница 4

And he was lost in thought for a while. Then he took my lamb out of his pocket and carefully examined his treasure.

You can imagine how intrigued I was by his confidence that other planets exist. So I tried really hard to find out as much as possible about this.

“My little man, where are you from? Where is this “where I live” you talk about? Where do you want to take your lamb?”

“The advantage of the box you gave me is that at night he can use it as a house”, he replied after a thoughtful silence.

“That’s right. If you behave I will give you a rope so you could tie him during the day, and a peg to tie the rope to.”

The Little Prince seemed to be taken aback by this offer.

“To tie him up! What a weird idea”

“But if you don’t tie him up he will go somewhere and get lost”, I said.

My friend broke into impetuous laughter.

“Where do you think he will go?”

“Anywhere. Just over the hills and far away.”

Then the Little Prince said very seriously.

“It doesn’t matter. Everything is very small where I live!”

And then he added sadly.

“You just won’t be able to go far away…”

This way, I learned the second important fact, that the planet the Little Prince came from, is a little bigger than a house! But I wasn’t very surprised. I knew that apart from big planets such as Earth, Jupiter, Mars and Venus that we have named, there are hundreds of others. Some of them are so small they can hardly even be seen with a telescope.

When an astronomer discovers one of them he doesn’t name it but gives it a number. Let’s say, he could name it Asteroid 325.

I have serious grounds to believe that the planet the Little Prince came from is known as asteroid B-612. It was seen by a telescope only once. A Turkish astronomer managed to do it in 1909.

The astronomer presented his discovery at the International astronomic Congress. But he was wearing a Turkish outfit so nobody believed him. Adults are like this…

However, fortunately for the reputation of Asteroid-612, the Turkish dictator passed the law dictating that citizens had to wear European outfits under penalty of death. As a result, the astronomer, dressed with exquisite style and elegance, held another demonstration in 1920. This time everybody took his presentation seriously.

I only described you details about the asteroid and its number with the adults in mind. When you tell them that you found a new friend, they never ask you important questions. “How does his voice sound? What games does he love to play the most? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they try to find out. “How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does his father earn?”