"A month?"
"Yes, a month. Thirty minutes. Thirty days. Good evening."
And he lighted his lamp again.
As the little prince watched him, he felt that he loved this lamplighter
who was so faithful to his orders. He remembered the sunsets which he himself
had gone to seek, in other days, merely by pulling up his chair; and he wanted to
help his friend.
"You know," he said, "I can tell you a way you can rest whenever you want to..."
"I always want to rest," said the lamplighter.
For it is possible for a man to be faithful and lazy at the same time.
The little prince went on with his explanation:
"Your planet is so small that three strides will take you all the way around it.
To be always in the sunshine, you need only walk along rather slowly. When you
want to rest, you will walk-- and the day will last as long as you like."
"That doesn't do me much good," said the lamplighter. "The one thing I love in
life is to sleep."
"Then you're unlucky," said the little prince.
"I am unlucky," said the lamplighter. "Good morning."
And he put out his lamp.
"That man," said the little prince to himself, as he continued farther
on his journey, "that man would be scorned by all the others: by the king,
by the conceited man, by the tippler, by the businessman. Nevertheless he is the
only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because
he is thinking of something else besides himself."
He breathed a sigh of regret, and said to himself, again:
"That man is the only one of them all whom I could have made my friend.
But his planet is indeed too small. There is no room on it for two people..."
What the little prince did not dare confess was that he was sorry most of all
to leave this planet, because it was blest every day with 1440 sunsets!