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The Little Prince
by ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
"I was surprised by suddenly understanding that mysterious radiance of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and there was a legend that a treasure was buried in it somewhere. Of course, no one was ever able to find the treasure, perhaps no one even searched. But it cast a spell over the whole house."
... And, after a little silence, he spoke again: "The stars are beautiful, because of a flower that cannot be seen."
I replied, "Yes, that is so." And, without saying anything more, I looked across the ridges of sand that were stretched out before us in the moonlight.
"The desert is beautiful," the little prince added.
And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams . . .
"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well . . .".
When the narrator and the prince search for a well, the narrator appears finally to understand the lessons that the prince has related to him. What does this say about the morals of the novel?
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