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So I kept my own company, without anyone whom I could really talk to, until six years ago, when I made a forced landing in the Sahara desert. Something had broken in my engine. And as I had neither mechanic nor passengers with me, I braced myself to attempt a difficult repair job all alone. It was a matter of life or death: I had barely enough drinking water to last a week.
On the first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand a thousand miles from all human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked man on a raft in mid-ocean. So imagine my surprise to be woken at daybreak by a funny little voice saying:
'If you please - draw me a sheep!'
''What!'
'Draw me a sheep ...'
I leapt to my feet, completely thunderstruck. I rubbed my eyes slowly. I looked around slowly. And then I saw a most extraordinary little fellow, who stood there solemnly watching me. Here is the best likeness that, later on, I was able to make of him. The drawing is certainly far less delightful than the original. But that is not my fault. I had been discouraged by the grown-ups in my career as a painter, when I was six years old, and had never learned to draw anything — except the insides of boas and the outsides of boas.
Now I was staring at this apparition before me, my eyes popping out of my head. Remember, I was a thousand miles from all human habitation. Yet this little fellow seemed neither to have lost his way, nor to be dying of exhaustion, or hunger, or thirst, or fright. Nothing about him suggested a child astray in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from all human habitation. When I finally found my voice, I said:
But - but what are you doing here?'
To which he merely repeated, very slowly, as though it were a matter of great consequence:
'If you please - draw me a sheep ...'
When a mystery is too overwhelming, you do not dare to question it. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any inhabited place and in danger of death, I took a sheet of paper and a fountain pen out of my pocket. Then I remembered that at school I had only properly studied geography, history, arithmetic and grammar; so I told the little fellow (with a touch of irritation) that I didn't know how to draw. He replied:
'That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep.'
As I had never drawn a sheep before, I copied out for him one of the two pictures that I did know how to draw: the boa constrictor seen from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow say:
'No! no! no! I don't want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. Boas are very dangerous and elephants are very cumbersome. Where I come from everything is tiny. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep.'
So I drew him one.
He studied it carefully. Then he said:
'No! That one is already very sickly. Do me another.'
So I drew another.
My friend smiled gently, even indulgently.
'Surely you can sec for yourself - that's not a sheep; it's a ram. Look at his horns ...'
So I did my drawing once more. But it too was rejected, like the others:
'This one is too old. I want a sheep who will live a long time.'
My patience was by now exhausted - for I was in a hurry to start dismantling my engine - so I rapidly scribbled the drawing you see below.
Then I added, by way of explanation:
'That is his box. The sheep you want is inside.'
And, much to my surprise, I saw the face of my young judge light up.
'That's exactly how I want him! Do you think this sheep will need a lot of grass?'
'Why?'
'Because where I come from everything is tiny.'
'Oh, there's bound to be enough. I have given you a tiny sheep.'
He bent over the drawing:
'He's not as small as all that — Look! He's gone to sleep!'
And so it was that I made the acquaintance of the little prince.