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The Little Prince : Chapter 8 ========== 
I soon learned to know this flower better.
On the little
prince's planet the flowers had always been very simple.
They had only one ring
of petals; they took up no room at all; they were a trouble to nobody.
One
morning they would appear in the grass, and by night they would have faded
peacefully away.
But one day, from a seed blown from no one knew where, a new
flower had come up; and the little prince had
watched very closely over this
small sprout which was not like any other small sprouts on his planet.
It might,
you see, have been a new kind of baobab.
But the shrub soon stopped growing,
and began to get ready to produce a flower.
The little prince, who was present
at the first appearance of a huge bud, felt at once that some sort of miraculous
apparition must emerge from it. But the flower was not satisfied to complete the
preparations for her beauty in the
shelter of her green chamber. She chose her
colours with the greatest care. She adjusted her petals one by one.
She did not
wish to go out into the world all rumpled, like the field poppies.
It was only
in the full radiance of her beauty that she wished to appear. Oh, yes! She was a
coquettish creature!
And her mysterious adornment lasted for days and
days.
Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed
herself.

And, after working with all this painstaking
precision, she yawned and said:
"Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you
will excuse me. My petals are still all disarranged..."
But the little
prince could not restrain his admiration:
"Oh! How beautiful you
are!"
"Am I not?" the flower responded, sweetly. "And I was born at the same
moment as the sun..."
The little prince could guess easily enough that she
was not any too modest-- but how moving-- and exciting--
she was!
"I think
it is time for breakfast," she added an instant later. "If you would have the
kindness to think of my needs--"
And the little prince, completely abashed,
went to look for a sprinkling-can of fresh water. So, he tended the
flower.

So, too, she began very quickly to torment him
with her vanity-- which was, if the truth be known, a little difficult to
deal
with. One day, for instance, when she was speaking of her four thorns, she said
to the little prince:
"Let the tigers come with their claws!"
"There
are no tigers on my planet," the little prince objected. "And, anyway, tigers do
not eat weeds."
"I am not a weed," the flower replied, sweetly.
"Please
excuse me..."

"I am not at all afraid of tigers," she went on,
"but I have a horror of drafts. I suppose you wouldn't have a screen for
me?"
"A horror of drafts-- that is bad luck, for a plant," remarked the
little prince, and added to himself,
"This flower is a very complex
creature..."

"At night I want you to put me under a glass
globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place I came from--"
But she
interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed.
She could
not have known anything of any other worlds.
Embarassed over having let herself
be caught on the verge of such a manifest untruth,
she coughed two or three times,
in order to put the little prince in the wrong.
"The screen?"
"I was
just going to look for it when you spoke to me..."
Then she forced her cough
a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same.
So the
little prince, in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from his love,
had soon come to doubt her.
He had taken seriously words which were without
importance, and it made him very unhappy.
"I ought not to have listened to
her," he confided to me one day. "One never ought to listen to the flowers.
One
should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my
planet.
But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.
This tale of
claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with
tenderness and pity."
And he continued his confidences:
"The fact is
that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds
and not by words.
She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never
to have run away from her...
I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay
behind her poor little strategems.
Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too
young to know how to love her..."
  
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