It was now the eighth day since my breakdown in the desert, and I listened to the story of the merchant while drinking the last drop of my water supply.

'Well!' I said to the little prince, 'they are all very charming, these reminiscences of yours; but I have yet to mend my aeroplane, I have nothing left to drink, and I too should be happy if I could take my time walking slowly towards the nearest fountain of water!'

'My friend the fox — ' the little prince began saying.

'But my dear fellow, now is too late for foxes!'

'Why is that?'

'Because we are about to die of thirst?

He could not follow this reasoning, and replied:

'It is good to have a friend, even if you are about to die. I for one am very happy to have had a fox for a friend.'

'He does not understand the danger.' I said to myself. 'He has never been hungry or thirsty. A little sunshine is all that he needs.'

But he looked at me and read my thoughts:

'I am thirsty, too ... Let's look for a well.'

I shrugged wearily: it is absurd to go looking for a well, at random, in the immensity of the desert. Nevertheless we set off.

After we had walked along in silence for several hours, darkness fell and the stars began to light up. I noticed them as if in a dream, since I was slightly feverish with thirst. The little prince's words were dancing in my head.

'So you do get thirsty?' I asked him.

But he did not reply. He merely said:

'Water may also be good for the heart.'

I did not understand this, but said nothing. I knew better by now than to question him.

He was tired. He sat down. I sat down next to him. Then, after a silence, he spoke again:

'The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen.'

I replied, 'Yes, that is so', and watched, without saying anything, the folds of sand beneath the moonlight.

'The desert is beautiful.' he added.

Which was true. I have always loved the desert. You sit down on a sand dune. You see nothing. You hear nothing. Yet all the time something is radiating through the silence.

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it is hiding a well.'

To my surprise, I suddenly understood for the first time this mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in a very old house where, according to hearsay, a treasure was buried. Of course, nobody ever discovered it, nor perhaps did they even look for it. But it cast a spell over that whole house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart.

'Yes,' I said to the little prince. 'Whether it is a house, or stars, or the desert, what makes their beauty is invisible!'

'I am pleased,' he said, 'that you agree with my fox.'

Since the little prince was now falling asleep, I lifted him in my arms, and set off walking again. I felt deeply moved. I felt that I was carrying a fragile treasure. I even felt that nothing more fragile was to be found on this Earth. In the moonlight I looked at his pale forehead, his closed eyes, his locks of hair stirring in the wind, and said to myself: 'What I see here is but a shell. What is important is invisible.'

His lips were parted in what seemed like a faint smile, and I said to myself again: 'What affects me so strongly about this sleeping prince is his loyalty to a flower, to the image of a rose, which shines inside him like the flame of a lamp, even as he sleeps . . And I felt him to be more fragile still. A lamp needs to be shielded with care: the merest puff of wind can blow it out.

And, walking along in this fashion, I came upon the well, at daybreak.