第三章[第1页/共3页]

He cried out, then: "What! You dropped down from the sky""Yes," I answered, modestly.

It took me a long time to learn where he came from. The little prince, who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones I asked him. It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me.

“这没有甚么干系，我那边统统都很小很小。”

“拴住它？多么奇特的主张啊！”

After a reflective silence he answered: "The thing that is so good about the box you have given me is that at night he can use it as his house.""That is so. And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so that you can tie him during the day, and a post to tie him to."But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer: "Tie him! What a queer idea!"“But if you don’t tie him,” I said, “he will wander off somewhere, and get lost.”

“如果你不拴住它，”我说，“它就到处跑，会跑丢的。”

但是他不答复我的题目。他悄悄摇摆着脑袋，眼睛一向盯着我的飞机，接着说道：“乘坐它，你不成能是从很远的处所来的……”

我花了好长时候才明白他是从那里来的。小王子问我很多题目，我有很多迷惑，但是，对我提出的题目，小王子仿佛压根儿没有闻声似的。一点一点的，偶尔间他偶然中透露的一些只言片语逐步使我搞清了他的来源。比方，当他第一次瞥见我的飞机时（我就不画出我的飞机了，因为这类丹青对我来讲太庞大），他问我道：“这是个甚么玩意儿呀？”

The first time he saw my airplane, for instance (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too complicated for me), he asked me: "What is that object""That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane." And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly.