Chapter VIII
I soon learned more about this flower. There had always been very simple flowers on the planet of the little prince, adorned with a single row of petals, and which held no room, and which did not disturb any one. They appeared one morning in the grass, and then they were extinguished in the evening. But that one had germinated one day, of a seed brought from somewhere, and the little prince had watched very closely that twig that did not resemble the other twigs. It could be a new kind of baobab. But the shrub soon ceased to grow, and began to prepare a flower. The little prince, who was watching the installation of an enormous button, felt that a miraculous apparition would emerge, but the flower did not finish preparing to be beautiful, sheltered from his green room . She carefully chose her colors. She dressed slowly, she adjusted her petals one by one. She did not want to get out of it all like the poppies. She wanted to appear only in the full radiance of her beauty. Hey! Yes. She was very coquette! His mysterious dress had lasted days and days. And then one morning, just at sunrise, she had shown herself.
And she, who had worked so precisely, said in yawning:
"Ah! I'm just waking up ... I beg your pardon ... I'm still disheveled ... "
The little prince, then, could not contain his admiration:
" How beautiful you are !
"Is not that right," the flower replied softly. And I was born at the same time as the sun ... "
The little prince guessed that she was not too modest, but she was so moving!
"It's time, I think, for breakfast," she would soon add, "would you have the kindness to think of me?"
And the little prince, quite confused, having sought a watering-can of fresh water, had served the flower.
So had she quickly tormented him by his somewhat shady vanity. One day, for example, speaking of her four thorns, she had said to the little prince:
"They can come, the tigers, with their claws!
"There are no tigers on my planet," objected the little prince, "and then the tigers do not eat grass."
- I am not a grass, had gently replied the flower.
- Excuse me…
"I have no fear of tigers, but I hate currents of air." You would not have a screen? "
"Horror of drafts ... it is not luck, for a plant, had noticed the little prince. This flower is very complicated ... »
"In the evening you will put me under a globe. It's very cold at home. It's badly installed. Where I come from… "
But she had interrupted herself. It had come in the form of a seed. She had not known anything about other worlds. Humiliated at having allowed herself to be surprised at preparing such a naive lie, she coughed two or three times to put the little prince into his wrong:
"This screen?" ...
- I was going to get him but you were talking to me! "
Then she had forced her cough to inflict remorse.
Thus the little prince, notwithstanding the goodwill of his love, soon doubted her. He had taken unimportant words seriously, and had become very unhappy.
"I should not have listened to him," he confided to me one day, "you must never listen to flowers. You have to look at them and breathe them. Mine embalmed my planet, but I could not rejoice. This story of claws, which had so annoyed me, should have tempted me ... "
He again confided to me:
"I did not understand anything! I should have judged her on the acts and not the words. She embarrassed me and enlightened me. I should never have fled! I should have guessed his tenderness behind his poor tricks. The flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love him. "