'People leap into express trains.' said the little prince, 'but they no longer know what they're looking for. So they get agitated and go round in circles.'

And he added:

'It's not worth the trouble.'

The well we had found was not like other wells in the Sahara. Saharan wells are simple holes bored into the sand.

This was like a well in a village. But there was no village here, and I thought I must be dreaming.

'This is strange.' I said to the little prince. 'Everything is ready and waiting: the pulley, the bucket, the rope ... '

He laughed, touched the rope, and set the pulley in motion. And the pulley creaked, as an old weathervane creaks when the wind has been asleep for a long time.

'Do you hear?' said the little prince. 'We have woken up the well, and it is singing.'

I did not want him to strain himself, however:

'Let me do it,' I said. 'It's too heavy for you.'

I hoisted the bucket slowly to the edge and carefully set it down. The song of the pulley was ringing in my ears, and in the still trembling water I could see the trembling sun.

'How I long for this water,' said the little prince. 'Give me some to drink.'

And I understood what he had been looking for.

I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. This water gladdened the heart. It was something other than a mere beverage. Its sweetness was born of our march beneath the stars, of the pulley's song and the exertion of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music at midnight mass, the tenderness of the smiling faces, all these together made up the radiance of the present I received.

"Where you come from.' said the little prince, 'people grow five thousand roses in one garden — and still they do not find what they are looking for.'

'No, they do not find it,' I replied.

'Yet what they are looking for could be found in a single rose, or in a handful of water.'

'That is true,' I replied.

And he added:

'But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.'

I had now drunk my fill of water. I breathed deeply. The desert sand, at daybreak, is the colour of honey. I was happy, too, on account of this colour of honey. Why, then, did I also feel such sadness?

'You must keep to your promise.' said the little prince gently, after sitting down beside me again.

'What promise?'

'You know - a muzzle for the sheep. I have to be responsible for my flower!'

I took the rough sketches from my pocket. The little prince glanced over them and said, laughing:

'Your baobabs - they look more like cabbages.'

And I had been so proud of my baobabs!

'Your fox's ears ... Well, they look more like horns.

And they're too long!'

He laughed again.

'That is not fair, my little fellow; I have only ever been able to draw the outsides of boas and the insides of boas?

'Oh! you'll manage,'  he said. 'Children will understand.'

So I sketched him a muzzle. But my heart felt tight as I handed it to him.

'You have plans that I do not know about. . .'

He made no reply. Then he said:

'You know — the day I fell to Earth ... Tomorrow will be the anniversary.'

After a moment's silence, he went on:

'I landed very near to where we are now.'

He blushed.

Again, without knowing why, I felt a strange sorrow. One question, however, occurred to me:

'It was not by accident, then, on the morning when I met you — a week ago — that you were walking along like that, all alone, a thousand miles from human habitation? You were on your way back to the place where you landed?'

The little prince blushed again.

And I added, hesitantly:

'Because of its being the anniversary, perhaps?'

The little prince blushed once more. He never answered questions - but when somebody blushes that means 'yes', doesn't it?

'Ah!' I said to him. 'Now I am frightened.'

But he interrupted me:

'Now you must work. You must set off back to your engine. I shall wait for you here. Come back tomorrow evening.'

But I was not reassured. I remembered the fox: you run the risk of a few tears when you allow yourself to be tamed.