Malý princ /The Little Prince - Story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Příběh (Level2)

The Little Prince

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True
Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.

It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.
Here is a copy of the drawing.

In the book it said:

 

"Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it.
After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."
I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle.
And after some work
with a coloured pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. 

My Drawing
Number One. It looked like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing
frightened them.

But they answered: "Frighten?

 Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. 

It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, 

I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the

grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. 

My Drawing Number Two looked like this:

The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings

of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself

instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. 

That is why, at the age of six,

I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. 

I had disheartened by the failure of my Drawing 

Number One and my Drawing

Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by 

themselves, and it is for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a

little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me.

At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. 

If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many

people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a

great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. 

And hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met 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.

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 constrictors, or primeval forests,

or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him

and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be about bridge

greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.