What I read today.

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike,

and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if

the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others.

Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my

burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me.

The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold.

Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me

back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

*******************

Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one

can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

*******************

And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears

nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams . . .

I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little

boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever

known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that

house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart . . .

"Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert--what gives them their beauty is something

Merci