The Little Prince (85)

The Little Prince (85)

  " Then it has done you no good at all ! "

  " It has done me good, " said the fox, " because of the color of the wheat fields. " And then he added:
  " Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret. "

  THE LITTLE PRINCE went away, to look again at the roses.

  " You are not at all like my rose, " he said.
  " As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world. "

  And the roses were very much embarrassed.

  " You are beautiful, but you are empty, " he went on.
  " One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you ー the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses : because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe ; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen ; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies ) ; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.
Because she is my rose. "

(85)