The sixth planet was ten times larger than the last one. It was inhabited by
an old gentleman who wrote voluminous books.
"Oh, look! Here is an explorer!" he exclaimed to himself when he saw the little prince coming.
The little prince sat down on the table and panted a little. He had already traveled
so much and so far!
"Where do you come from?" the old gentleman said to him.
"What is that big book?" said the little prince. "What are you doing?"
"I am a geographer," the old gentleman said to him.
"What is a geographer?" asked the little prince.
"A geographer is a scholar who knows the location of all the seas, rivers,
towns, mountains, and deserts."
"That is very interesting," said the little prince. "Here at last is a man who
has a real profession!" And he cast a look around him at the planet of the geographer.
It was the most magnificent and stately planet that he had ever seen.
"Your planet is very beautiful," he said. "Has it any oceans?"
"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.
"Ah!" The little prince was disappointed. "Has it any mountains?"
"I couldn't tell you," said the geographer.
"And towns, and rivers, and deserts?"
"I couldn't tell you that, either."
"But you are a geographer!"
"Exactly," the geographer said. "But I am not an explorer. I haven't a single
explorer on my planet. It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns,
the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, and the deserts. The geographer
is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk. But he receives
the explorers in his study. He asks them questions, and he notes down what they recall
of their travels. And if the recollections of any one among them seem interesting to him,
the geographer orders an inquiry into that explorer's moral character."
"Why is that?"
"Because an explorer who told lies would bring disaster on the books of the geographer.
So would an explorer who drank too much."
"Why is that?" asked the little prince.
"Because intoxicated men see double. Then the geographer would note down two mountains
in a place where there was only one."
"I know some one," said the little prince, "who would make a bad explorer."