فصل بیستم

Chapter twenty

But it so happened that the little prince, having walked a long time through sand and rocks and snow, finally discovered a road. And all roads go to where there are people.

“Good morning,” he said.

It was a blossoming rose garden.

“Good morning,” said the roses.

The little prince gazed at them. All of them looked like his flower.

“Who are you” he asked, astounded.

“We’re roses,” the roses said.

“Ah” said the little prince.

And he felt very unhappy. His flower had told him she was the only one of her kind in the whole universe. And here were five thousand of them, all just alike, in just one garden!

“She would be very annoyed,” he said to himself, “if she saw this…“She would cough terribly and pretend to be dying, to avoid being laughed at.

And I’d have to pretend to be nursing her; otherwise, she’d really let herself die in order to humiliate me.”

And then he said to himself, “I thought I was rich because I had just one flower, and all I own is an ordinary rose.

That and my three volcanoes, which come up to my knee, one of which may be permanently extinct; It doesn’t make me much of a prince…” And he lay down in the grass and wept.